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LIBRARY 

UNiVLk...!  -t  Of 

CALlFOrr.^;M 

SAN  DiEGO 


i«iWHWMWB!HliBMI!HMiiBa^ 

Htbrary  of  X\\i  | 

CfII|urrl|  irotnitQ  ^rlyonl 
of  tlyr  Parifir     ^ 


Class.. Q.f^A 
Ex  Dono  J.'^^k'::^^?^^^ 
Date  ?..:..?:.±:.±.:/. 

44HHB 


'"^e^f^i^C^^ri/^yjicAo^' 


u/c^rrt,ccu 


KC^7/6 


(fnglbl)  Mtn  of  Sfttttts 

EDITED  BY  JOHN  MORLEY 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/charleslambalfrOOaingiala 


CHARLES  LAMB 


Cbarles  Xamb 


by 
ALFRED  AINGER,  M.A.,  LL.D. 

AUTHOR  Oi= 

"  SERMONS  PREACHED  IN  THE  TEMPLE 

CHURCH" 


Bnalisb  noen  of  Xetters 

EDITED  BY 

JOHN    MORLEY 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS   PUBLISHERS 

NEW     YORK     AND     LONDON 
1902 


JL  %1'8 


PREFATORY   NOTE. 

The  writings  of  Charies  Lamb  abound  in  biographical 
matter.  To  them,  and  to  the  well-known  volumes  of  the 
late  Mr.  Justice  Talfourd,  I  am  mainly  indebted  for  the 
material  of  which  this  memoir  is  composed. 

I  have  added  a  complete  hst  of  the  chief  works  from 
which  information  about  Lamb  and  his  sister  has  been 
obtained.  I  have  also  had  the  advantage  of  communica- 
tion with  those  who  were  personally  acquainted  with 
Lamb,  and  have  received  from  others  valuable  assistance 
in  exploring  less  known  sources  of  information. 

Among  those  to  whom  my  acknowledgments  for  much 
kindness  are  due,  I  would  mention  Mrs.  Arthur  Tween,  a 
daughter  of  that  old  and  loyal  friend  of  the  Lamb  family, 
Mr.  Randal  Norris ;  Mr.  James  Crossley,  of  Manchester ; 
Mr.  Edward  FitzGerald;  Mr.  W.  Aldis  Wright;  and  last, 
not  least,  my  friend  Mr.  J.  E.  Davis,  of  the  Middle  Tem- 
ple, whose  kind  interest  in  this  little  book  has  been  un- 
failing. 

A.A. 


AUTHOKITIES  CONSULTED. 

1.  The  Essays  of  Ella,  and  other  writings,  in  prose 

and  verse,  of  Charles  Lamb. 

2.  Letters  of  Charles  Lamb,  with  a  Sketch  of  his  Life 

by  Thomas  Noon  Talfourd 1837 

3.  Final  Memorials  of  Charles  Lamb,  &c.,  by  Thomas 

Noon  Talfourd 1848 

4.  Charles  Lamb :  A  Memoir,  by  Barry  Cornwall  .    .    1866 

5.  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb :  Poems,  Letters,  and  Re- 

mains, by  W.  Carew  Hazlitt 1874 

6.  Gillman's  Life  of  Coleridge,  vol.  i 1838 

7.  Cottle's  Early  Recollections  of  Coleridge     .    .    .  1837 

8.  Alsop's  Letters,  Conversations,  and  Recollections  of 

Coleridge 1836 

9.  My  Friends  and  Acquaintance,  by  P.  G.  Patmore  .    1854 

10.  Autobiography  of  Leigh  Hunt 1850 

11.  Memoirs  of  William  Hazlitt,  by  W.  Carew  Hazlitt .     1867 

12.  Literary  Reminiscences,  by  Thomas  Hood  (in  Hood's 

Own) 1839 

13.  Haydon's  Autobiography  and  Journals    ....  1853 

14.  Diary  of  Henry  Crabb  Robinson 1869 

15.  Memoir  of  Charles  Mathews  (the  elder),  by  Mrs. 

Mathews 1838 

16.  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Robert  Southey     .    .    1849 

17.  Obituary  Notices,  Reminiscences,  Essays,  &c.,  \xx 

various  magazines  and  reviews. 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  1 

[1775-1789.]  Pa«» 

Boyhood. — ^The  Templk  and  Chbist's  Hospital 1 

CHAPTER  II. 

nT89-lT96.1 

FaMILT  StBTJQOLSS  AMD  SORROWS 17 

CHAPTER  m. 

11796-1800.] 

First  Expebments  in  Literature 83 

CHAPTER  lY. 

[1800-1809.] 

Dramatic  A0thorship  and  Dramatic  Criticism 49 

CHAPTER  V. 

[1809-1817.] 

Inner  Temple  Lane. — ^Personal  Characteristics 73 

CHAPTER  VI. 

[1817-1823.] 

Russell  Street,  Covent  Garden. — The  Essays  of  Ella     .    .    94 


X  CONTENTa 

CHAPTER  VIL 

a823-1828.J  Pa«« 

COLEBROOK  Row,  ISLINGTON. — ThB   CoNTROVKRST  WITH  SOUTHST, 

AND  RiTIKBHXNT  FROM  THB  InDIA   HoUSE 122 

CHAPTER  Vm. 

[1826-1834] 

Enfield  and  Edmonton 146 

CHAPTER  K. 
Lakb's  Place  as  a  Gbitio. 168 


CHARLES  LAMB. 

CHAPTER  L 

BOYHOOD. — THE    TEMPLE    AND    CHRIST's   HOSPITAL. 

[1775-1789.] 

"I  WAS  born  and  passed  the  first  seven  years  of  my  life 
in  the  Temple.  Its  church,  its  halls,  its  gardens,  its  foun- 
tain, its  river,  I  had  almost  said — for  in  those  young  years 
what  was  this  king  of  rivers  to  me  but  a  stream  that 
watered  our  pleasant  places? — ^these  are  of  my  oldest  rec- 
ollections." In  this  manner  does  Charles  Lamb,  in  an  es- 
say that  is  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  English  prose,  open 
for  us  those  passages  of  autobiography  which  happily 
abound  in  his  writings.  The  words  do  more  than  fix 
places  and  dates.  They  strike  the  key  in  which  his  early 
life  was  set — and  the  later  life,  hardly  less.  The  genius 
of  Lamb  was  surely  guided  into  its  special  channel  by  the 
chance  that  the  first  fourteen  years  of  his  life  were  passed, 
as  has  been  said,  "  between  cloister  and  cloister,"  between 
the  mediaeval  atmosphere  of  the  quiet  Temple  and  that  of 
the  busy  school  of  Edward  VL 

Charles  Lamb  was  born  on  the  10th  of  February,  1775, 
in  Crown  OflBce  Row  in  the  Temple,  the  line  of  buildings 


3  CHARLES  LAMB.  [ohap. 

facing  the  garden  and  the  river  he  has  so  lovingly  com- 
memorated. His  father,  John  Lamb,  who  had  come  up 
a  country  boy  from  Lincolnshire  to  seek  his  fortune  in 
the  great  city,  was  clerk  and  servant  to  Mr.  Samuel  Salt, 
a  Bencher  of  the  Inner  Temple.  He  had  married  Eliza- 
beth Field,  whose  mother  was  for  more  than  fifty  years 
house-keeper  at  the  old  mansion  of  the  Plumers,  Blakes- 
ware  in  Hertfordshire,  the  Blakesmoor  of  the  Essays  of 
Elia.  The  issue  of  this  marriage  was  a  family  of  seven 
children,  only  three  of  whom  seem  to  have  survived  their 
early  childhood.  The  registers  of  the  Temple  Church 
record  the  baptisms  of  all  the  seven  children,  ranging 
from  the  year  1762  to  1775.  Of  the  three  who  lived 
Charles  was  the  youngest.  The  other  two  were  his 
brother  John,  who  was  twelve  years,  and  his  sister  Mary 
Anne  (better  known  to  us  as  Mary),  who  was  ten  years 
his  senior.  The  marked  difference  in  age  between  Charles 
and  his  brother  and  sister,  must  never  be  overlooked  in 
the  estimate  of  the  diflBculties,  and  of  the  heroism,  of  his 
later  life. 

In  the  essay  already  cited — that  on  the  Old  Benchers 
of  the  Inner  Temple — Charles  has  drawn  for  us  a  touching 
portrait  of  his  father,  the  barrister's  clerk,  under  the  name 
of  Lovel.  After  speaking  of  Samuel  Salt,  the  Bencher, 
and  certain  indolent  and  careless  ways  from  which  he 
"might  have  suffered  severely  if  he  had  not  had  honest 
people  about  him,"  he  digresses  characteristically  into  a 
description  of  the  faithful  servant  who  was  at  hand  to 
protect  him : 

"  Lovel  took  care  of  everything.  He  was  at  once  his  clerk,  his  good 
servant,  his  dresser,  his  friend,  his  '  flapper,'  his  guide,  stop-watch, 
auditor,  treasurer.  He  did  nothing  without  consulting  Lovel,  or  fail- 
ed in  anything  without  expecting  and  fearing  his  admonishing.    He 


l]  boyhood.  8 

put  himself  almost  too  much  in  his  hands,  had  they  not  been  the 
purest  in  the  world.  He  resigned  his  title  almost  to  respect  as  a 
master,  if  Lovel  could  ever  have  forgotten  for  a  moment  that  he  was 
a  servant. 

"  I  knew  this  Lovel.  He  was  a  man  of  an  incorrigible  and  losing 
honesty.  A  good  fellow  withal,  and  '  would  strike.'  In  the  caus« 
of  the  oppressed  he  never  considered  inequalities,  or  calculated  the 
number  of  his  opponents.  He  once  wrested  a  sword  out  of  the  hand 
of  a  man  of  quality  that  had  drawn  upon  him,  and  pommelled  him 
severely  with  the  hilt  of  it.  The  swordsman  had  offered  insult  to  a 
female — an  occasion  upon  which  no  odds  against  him  could  have 
prevented  the  interference  of  LoveL  He  would  stand  next  day  bare- 
headed to  the  same  person,  mo(Jestly  to  excuse  his  interference,  for 
Lovel  never  forgot  rank,  where  something  better  was  not  concerned. 
Lovel  was  the  liveliest  little  fellow  breathing ;  had  a  face  as  gay  as 
Garrick's,  whom  he  was  said  greatly  to  resemble  (I  have  a  portrait 
of  him  which  confirms  it) ;  possessed  a  fine  turn  for  humorous  poetry 
—next  to  Swift  and  Prior ;  moulded  heads  in  clay  or  plaster  of  Paris 
to  admiration,  by  the  dint  of  natural  genius  merely ;  turned  cribbage- 
boards,  and  such  small  cabinet  toys,  to  perfection ;  took  a  hand  at 
quadrille  or  bowls  with  equal  facility ;  made  punch  better  than  any 
man  of  his  degree  in  England ;  had  the  merriest  quips  and  conceits, 
and  was  altogether  as  brimful  of  rogueries  and  inventions  as  you 
could  desire.  He  was  a  brother  of  the  angle,  moreover,  and  just 
such  a  free,  hearty,  honest  companion  as  Mr.  Izaak  Walton  would 
have  chosen  to  go  a-fishing  with. 

"  I  saw  him  in  his  old  age,  and  the  decay  of  his  faculties,  palsy- 
smitten,  in  the  last  sad  stage  of  human  weakness — '  a  remnant  most 
forlorn  of  what  he  was ' — yet  even  then  his  eye  would  light  up  upon 
the  mention  of  his  favourite  Garrick.  He  was  greatest,  he  would 
say,  in  Bayes — 'was  upon  the  stage  nearly  throughout  the  whole 
performance,  and  as  busy  as  a  bee.'  At  intervals,  too,  he  would 
speak  of  his  former  life,  and  how  he  came  up  a  little  boy  from  Lin- 
coln to  go  to  service,  and  how  his  mother  cried  at  parting  with  him, 
and  how  he  returned  after  some  few  years'  absence  in  his  smart  new 
livery,  to  see  her,  and  she  blessed  herself  at  the  change  and  could 
hardly  be  brought  to  believe  that  it  was  'her  own  bairn.'  And 
then,  the  excitement  subsiding,  he  would  weep,  till  I  have  wished 


4  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

that  sad  second-childhood  might  have  a  mother  still  to  lay  its  head 
upon  her  lap.  But  the  common  mother  of  us  all  in  no  long  time 
after  received  him  gently  into  hers." 

I  have  digressed,  in  my  turn,  from  the  story  of  Charles 
Lamb's  own  life,  but  it  is  not  without  interest  to  learn 
from  whom  Charles  inherited,  not  only  something  of  his 
versatility  of  gift,  but  his  chivalry  and  tenderness. 

The  household  in  Crown  OflBce  Row  were  from  the  be- 
ginning poor — of  that  we  may  feel  certain.  An  aunt  of 
Charles,  his  father's  sister,  formed  one  of  the  family,  and 
contributed  something  to  the  common  income,  but  John 
Lamb  the  elder  was  the  only  other  bread-winner.  And  a 
barrister's  clerk  with  seven  children  born  to  him  in  a 
dozen  years,  even  if  lodging  were  found  him,  could  not 
have  had  much  either  to  save  or  to  spend.  Before  seven 
years  of  age  Charles  got  the  rudiments  of  education  from 
a  Mr.  William  Bird,  whose  school-room  looked  "  into  a  dis- 
coloured dingy  garden  in  the  passage  leading  from  Fetter 
Lane  into  Bartlett's  Buildings."  We  owe  this,  and  some 
other  curious  information  about  the  academy,  to  a  letter 
of  Lamb's  addressed  in  1826  to  Hone,  the  editor  of  the 
Every  Day  Book.  In  that  periodical  had  appeared  an  ac- 
count of  a  certain  Captain  Starkey,  who  was  for  some 
time  an  assistant  -of  Bird's.  The  mention  of  his  old 
teacher's  name  in  this  connexion  called  up  in  Lamb  many 
recollections  of  his  earliest  school-days,  and  produced  the 
letter  just  named,  full  of  characteristic  matter.  The 
school,  out  of  Fetter  Lane,  was  a  day-school  for  boys,  and 
an  evening-school  for  girls,  and  Charles  and  Mary  had  the 
advantages,  whatever  they  may  have  been,  of  its  instruc- 
tion. Starkey  had  spoken  of  Bird  as  "  an  eminent  writer, 
and  teacher  of  languages  and  mathematics,"  &c. ;  upon 
which  Lamb's   comment  is,  "  Heaven   knows   what  Ian- 


I.]  BOYHOOD.  6 

guages  were  taught  in  it  then !  I  am  sure  that  neither 
my  sister  nor  myself  brought  any  out  of  it  but  a  little  of 
our  native  English."  Then  follow  some  graphic  descrip- 
tions of  the  birch  and  the  ferule,  as  wielded  by  Mr.  Bird, 
and  other  incidents  of  school-life : 

"  Oh,  how  I  remember  our  legs  wedged  mto  those  uncomfortable 
sloping  desks,  where  we  sat  elbowing  each  other ;  and  the  injunctions 
to  attain  a  free  hand,  unattainable  in  that  position ;  the  first  copy  I 
wrote  after, with  its  moral  lesson,  'Art  improves  nature;'  the  still 
earlier  pot-hooks  and  the  hangers,  some  traces  of  which  I  fear  may 
yet  be  apparent  in  this  manuscript." 

When  Charles  had  absorbed  such  elementary  learning 
as  was  to  be  acquired  under  Mr.  Bird  and  his  assistants, 
his  father  might  have  been  much  perplexed  where  to  find 
an  education  for  his  younger  son,  within  his  slender 
means,  and  yet  satisfying  his  natural  ambition,  had  not  a 
governor  of  Christ's  Hospital,  of  the  name  of  Yeates,  prob- 
ably a  friend  of  Samuel  Salt,  offered  him  a  presentation  to 
that  admirable  charity.  And  on  the  9th  of  October,  1Y82, 
Charles  Lamb,  then  in  his  eighth  year,  entered  the  institu- 
tion, and  remained  there  for  the  next  seven  years. 

There  is  scarcely  any  portion  of  his  life  about  which 
Lamb  has  not  himself  taken  his  readers  into  his  confidence, 
and  in  his  essay  on  Witches  and  other  Night-fears  he  has 
referred  to  his  own  sensitive  and  superstitious  childhood, 
made  more  sensitive  by  the  books,  meat  too  strong  for 
childish  digestion,  to  which  he  had  free  access  in  his  fa- 
ther's collection.  "I  was  dreadfully  alive  to  nervous  ter- 
rors. The  night-time  solitude  and  the  dark  were  my  hell. 
The  sufferings  I  endured  in  this  nature  would  justify  the 
expression.  I  never  laid  my  head  on  my  pillow,  I  sup- 
pose, from  the  fourth  to  the  seventh  or  eighth  year  of  my 


6  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chat. 

life — so  far  as  memory  serves  in  things  so  long  ago — with- 
out an  assurance,  which  realized  its  own  prophecy,  of  see- 
ing some  frightful  spectre."  Lamb  was  fond  both  of  ex- 
aggeration and  of  mystification,  as  we  shall  see  further  on, 
but  this  account  of  his  childhood  is  not  inconsistent  with 
descriptions  of  it  from  other  sources.  There  was  a  strain 
of  mental  excitability  in  all  the  family,  and  in  the  case  of 
Charles  the  nervousness  of  childhood  was  increased  by  the 
impediment  in  his  speech  which  remained  with  him  for 
life,  and  made  so  curious  a  part  of  his  unique  personality. 
"He  was  an  amiable,  gentle  boy,"  wrote  one  who  had  been 
at  school  with  him, "  very  sensible  and  keenly  observing, 
indulged  by  his  school-fellows  and  by  his  master  on  ac- 
count of  his  infirmity  of  speech.  I  never  heard  his  name 
mentioned,"  adds  this  same  school-fellow,  Charles  Valen- 
tine Le  Grice,  "  without  the  addition  of  Charles,  although, 
as  there  was  no  other  boy  of  the  name  of  Lamb,  the  addi- 
tion was  unnecessary ;  but  there  was  an  implied  kindness 
in  it,  and  it  was  a  proof  that  his  gentle  manners  excited 
that  kindness."  Let  us  note  here  that  this  term  "  gentle  " 
(the  special  epithet  of  Shakspeare)  seems  to  have  occurred 
naturally  to  all  Lamb's  friends,  as  that  which  best  described 
him.  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  Landor,  and  Cary  recall  no 
trait  more  tenderly  than  this.  And  let  us  note  also  that 
the  addition  of  his  Christian  name  (Lamb  loved  the  use 
of  it :  "So  Christians,"  he  said, "  should  call  one  another  ") 
followed  him  through  life  and  beyond  it.  There  is  per- 
haps no  other  English  writer  who  is  so  seldom  mentioned 
by  his  surname  alone. 

Of  Lamb's  experience  of  school-life  we  are  fortunate  in 
having  a  full  description  in  his  essay,  entitled  Recollections 
of  Chris fs  Hospital,  published  in  1818,  and  the  sequel  to 
it,  called  CJirisfs  Hospital  Five-and-thirty  Years  Ago  (one 


I.]  THE  TEMPLE  AND  CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL.  7 

of  the  Mia  essays),  published  two  years  later.  But  it  re- 
quires some  familiarity  with  Lamb's  love  of  masquerading, 
already  referred  to,  to  disengage  fact  from  fancy,  and  ex- 
tract what  refers  to  himself  only,  in  these  two  papers. 
The  former  is,  what  it  purports  to  be,  a  serious  tribute  of 
praise  to  the  dignified  and  elevating  character  of  the  great 
charity  by  which  he  had  been  fostered.  It  speaks  chiefly 
of  the  young  scholar's  pride  in  the  antiquity  of  the  foun- 
dation and  the  monastic  customs  and  ritual  which  had 
survived  into  modern  times ;  of  the  founder,  "  that  godly 
and  royal  child.  King  Edward  VI.,  the  flower  of  the  Tudor 
name — the  young  flower  that  was  untimely  cropped,  as 
it  began  to  fill  our  land  with  its  early  odours — the  boy- 
patron  of  boys — the  serious  and  holy  child  who  walked 
with  Cranmer  and  Ridley,"  with  many  touching  reminis- 
cences of  the  happy  days  spent  in  country  excursions  or 
visits  to  the  sights  of  London.  But  in  calling  up  these 
recollections  it  seems  to  have  struck  Lamb  that  his  old 
school,  like  other  institutions,  had  more  than  one  side,  and 
that  the  grievances  of  school-boys,  real  and  imaginary,  as 
well  as  the  humorous  side  of  some  of  the  regulations  and 
traditions  of  the  school,  might  supply  material  for  another 
picture  not  less  interesting.  Accordingly,  under  the  dis- 
guise of  the  signature  Elia,  he  wrote  a  second  account  of 
his  school,  purporting  to  be  a  corrective  of  the  over-colour- 
ing employed  by  "Mr.  Lamb"  in  the  former  account. 
The  writer  afEects  to  be  a  second  witness  called  in  to  sup- 
plement the  evidence  of  the  first.  "  I  remember  L.  at 
school,"  writes  Lamb,  under  the  signature  of  Elia.  "  It 
happens  very  oddly  that  my  own  standing  at  Christ's  was 
nearly  corresponding  to  his ;  and  with  all  gratitude  to  him 
for  his  enthusiasm  for  the  cloisters,  I  think  he  has  con- 
trived to  bring  together  whatever  can  be  said  in  praise  of 
S 


8  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chip. 

them,  dropping  all  the  other  side  of  the  argument  most 
ingeniously."  This  other  side  Lamb  proceeds,  with  charm- 
ing humour,  to  set  forth,  and  he  does  so  in  the  character 
of  one,  a  "  poor  friendless  boy,"  whose  parents  were  far 
away  at  "  sweet  Calne,  in  Wiltshire,"  after  which  his  heart 
was  ever  yearning.  The  friendless  boy  whose  personality 
is  thus  assumed,  was  young  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  who 
had  entered  the  school  the  same  year  as  Lamb,  though  three 
years  his  senior.  Coleridge  and  Lamb  were  school-fellows 
for  the  whole  seven  years  of  the  latter's  residence,  and 
from  this  early  association  arose  a  friendship  as  memora- 
ble as  any  in  English  Literature.  "  Sweet  Calne,  in  Wilt- 
shire," was  thus  one  of  Lamb's  innocent  mystifications. 
It  was  to  the  old  home  at  "sweet  Ottery  St.  Mary,"  in 
Devonshire,  that  young  Samuel  Taylor's  thoughts  turned, 
when  he  took  his  lonely  country  rambles,  or  shivered  at 
the  cold  windows  of  the  print-shops  to  while  away  a  win- 
ter's holiday. 

In  the  character  of  Coleridge — though  even  here  the 
dramatic  position  is  not  strictly  sustained — Lamb  goes  on 
to  relate,  in  the  third  person,  many  incidents  of  his  own 
boyish  life,  which  differed  of  necessity  from  his  friend's. 
Charles  Lamb  was  not  troubled  how  to  get  through  a  win- 
ter's day,  for  he  had  shelter  and  friendly  faces  within  easy 
reach  of  the  school.  "  He  had  the  privilege  of  going  to 
see  them,  almost  as  often  as  he  wished,  through  some  in- 
vidious distinction  which  was  denied  to  us.  The  present 
worthy  sub-treasurer  to  the  Inner  Temple  can  explain  how 
that  happened.  He  had  his  tea  and  hot  rolls  in  the  morn- 
ing, while  we  were  battening  upon  our  quarter  of  a  penny- 
loaf  moistened  with  attenuated  small-beer,  in  wooden  pig- 
gins,  smacking  of  the  pitched  leathern  jack  it  was  poured 
from."  And  the  writer  proceeds  to  draw  a  charming  picture 


i]  THE  TEMPLE  AND  CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL.  9 

of  some  emissary  from  Lamb's  home,  his  "  maid  or  aunt," 
bringing  him  some  home-cooted  dainty,  and  squatting 
down  on  "  some  odd  stone  in  a  by-nook  of  the  cloisters  " 
while  he  partook  of  it.  It  suggests  a  pleasant  and  happy 
side  to  this  portion  of  Charles  Lamb's  life.  Humble  as 
his  home  was,  still  home  was  near,  and  not  unmindful  of 
him ;  and,  even  taking  into  account  the  severities  of  the 
discipline  and  other  of  the  school-boy's  natural  grievances, 
it  would  seem  as  if  Lamb's  school-years  had  a  genial  in- 
fluence on  his  mind  and  spirit. 

As  to  the  education,  in  the  common  acceptation  of  the 
word,  which  he  gained  during  those  seven  years  at  Christ's 
Hospital,  we  may  form  a  very  just  notion.  When  he  left 
the  school,  in  his  fifteenth  year,  in  November,  1789,  he 
was  (according  to  his  own  statement  made  in  more  than 
one  passage  of  his  writings)  deputy  Grecian.  Leigh  Hunt, 
who  entered  the  school  two  years  after  Lamb  quitted  it, 
and  knew  him  intimately  in  later  life,  says  the  same  thing. 
Talfourd  seems  to  have  applied  to  the  school  authorities 
for  precise  information,  and  gives  a  somewhat  different  ac- 
count. He  says  that  "in  the  language  of  the  school"  he 
was  "  in  Greek  form,  but  not  deputy  Grecian."  No  such 
distinction  is  understood  by  "Blues"  of  a  later  date,  but 
it  may  possibly  mean  that  Lamb  was  doing  deputy  Gre- 
cians' work,  though  he  was  in  some  way  technically  dis- 
qualified from  taking  rank  with  them.  "  He  had  read," 
Talfourd  goes  on  to  tell  us,  "  Virgil,  Sallust,  Terence,  Lu- 
cian,  and  Xenophon,'and  had  evinced  considerable  skill  in 
the  niceties  of  Latin  composition."  Latin,  not  Greek,  was 
certainly  his  strong  point,  and  with  Terence  especially  he 
shows  a  familiar  acquaintance.  He  wrote  colloquial  Latin 
with  great  readiness,  and  in  turning  nursery  rhymes  into 
that  language,  as  well  as  in  one  or  two  more  serious  at" 
15 


10  CHARLES  LAUB.  [chap. 

tempts,  there  are  proofs  of  an  ease  of  expression  very  cred- 
itable to  the  scholarship  of  a  boy  of  fourteen.  And  if  (as 
appears  certain)  Lamb,  though  not  in  the  highest  form  at 
Christ's  Hospital,  had  the  benefit  of  the  teaching  of  the 
head-master,  the  Rev.  James  Boyer,  we  have  good  reason 
for  knowing  that,  pedant  and  tyrant  though  Boyer  may 
have  been,  he  was  no  bad  trainer  for  such  endowments  as 
Coleridge's  and  Lamb's. 

Coleridge,  in  his  Biographia  Literaria,  has  drawn  a  com- 
panion picture  of  the  better  side  of  Christ's  Hospital  dis- 
cipline, which  may  judiciously  be  compared  with  Lamb's. 
"  At  school  I  enjoyed  the  inestimable  advantage  of  a  very 
sensible,  though  at  the  same  time  a  very  severe,  master. 
He  early  moulded  my  taste  to  the  preference  of  Demos- 
thenes to  Cicero,  of  Homer  and  Theocritus  to  Virgil,  and 
again  of  Virgil  to  Ovid.  He  habituated  me  to  compare 
Lucretius  (in  such  extracts  as  I  then  read),  Terence,  and, 
above  all,  the  chaster  poems  of  Catullus,  not  only  with  the 
Roman  poets  of  the  so-called  silver  and  brazen  ages,  but 
with  even  those  of  the  Augustan  era ;  and,  on  grounds  of 
plain  sense  and  universal  logic,  to  see  and  assert  the  supe- 
riority of  the  former  in  the  truth  and  nativeness  both  of 
their  thoughts  and  diction.  At  the  same  time  that  we 
were  studying  the  Greek  tragic  poets,  he  made  us  read 
Shakspeare  and  Milton  as  lessons ;  and  they  were  the  les- 
sons, too,  which  required  most  time  and  trouble  to  bring 
up,  so  as  to  escape  his  censure.  I  learnt  from  him  that 
poetry,  even  that  of  the  loftiest,  and  seemingly  that  of  the 
wildest  odes,  had  a  logic  of  its  own  as  severe  as  that  of 
science,  and  more  diflScult,  because  more  subtle,  more  com- 
plex, and  dependent  on  more  and  more  fugitive  causes. 
In  the  truly  great  poets,  he  would  say,  there  is  a  reason 
assignable,  not  only  for  every  word,  but  for  the  position 


t]  THE  TEMPLE  AND  CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL.  11 

of  every  word ;  and  I  well  remember  that,  availing  himself 
of  the  synonymes  to  the  Homer  of  Didymus,  he  made  ns 
attempt  to  show,  with  regard  to  each,  why  it  would  not 
have  answered  the  same  purpose,  and  wherein  consisted  the 
peculiar  fitness  of  the  word  in  the  original  text."  Such  a 
teacher,  according  to  Coleridge,  was  the  guiding  spirit  of 
Christ's  Hospital ;  and  even  allowing  for  Coleridge  having 
in  later  life  looked  back  with  magnifying  eyes  upon  those 
early  lessons,  and  read  into  Boyer's  teaching  something 
that  belonged  rather  to  the  learner  than  the  teacher,  we 
need  not  doubt  how  great  were  the  young  student's  obli- 
gations to  his  master.  Lamb,  who  was  three  years  young- 
er, and  never  reached  the  same  position  in  the  school,  may 
not  have  benefited  directly  by  this  method  of  Boyer's,  but 
he  was  the  intimate  companion  of  the  elder  school-boy,  and 
whatever  Boyer  taught  we  may  be  sure  was  handed  on  in 
some  form  or  other  to  Lamb,  tinged  though  it  may  have 
been  by  the  wondrous  individuality  of  his  friend. 

For  the  influence  of  Coleridge  over  Lamb,  during  these 
school-days  and  afterwards,  is  one  of  the  most  important 
elements  a  biographer  of  Lamb  has  to  take  account  of. 
The  boy,  Samuel  Taylor,  had  entered  the  school,  as  we 
have  seen,  in  the  same  year.  He  was  a  lonely,  dreamy 
lad,  not  living  wholly  apart  from  the  pastimes  of  his  com- 
panions, wandering  with  them  into  the  country,  and  bath- 
ing in  the  New  River,  on  the  holidays  of  summer,  but 
taking  his  pleasure  on  the  whole  sadly,  loving  above  all 
things  knowledge,  and  greedily  devouring  whatever  of 
that  kind  came  in  his  way.  Middleton,  afterwards  Bishop 
of  Calcutta,  at  the  time  a  Grecian  in  the  school,  found 
him  one  day  reading  Virgil  in  his  play-hour,  for  his  own 
amusement,  and  reported  the  circumstance  to  Boyer,  who 
acted  upon  it  by  fostering  henceforth  in  every  way  hia 


iJ  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

pupil's  talent.  A  stranger  who  met  the  boy  one  day  in 
the  London  streets,  lost  in  some  day-dream,  and  moving 
his  arms  as  one  who  "  spreadeth  forth  his  hands  to  swim," 
extracted  from  him  the  confession  that  he  was  only  think- 
ing of  Leander  and  the  Hellespont.  The  stranger,  im- 
pressed with  the  boy's  love  of  books,  subscribed  for  him 
to  a  library  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  school,  and 
young  Coleridge  proceeded,  as  he  has  told  us,  to  read 
"  through  the  catalogue,  folios  and  all,  whether  I  under- 
stood them  or  did  not  understand  them,  running  all  risks 
in  skulking  out  to  get  the  two  volumes  which  I  was  en- 
titled to  have  daily."  With  a  full  consciousness,  as  is 
apparent  of  his  power,  he  seems  at  this  age  to  have  had 
no  desire  for  distinction,  but  only  for  enlarged  experience. 
At  one  time  he  wanted  to  be  apprenticed  to  a  shoemaker, 
whose  wife  had  shown  him  some  kindnesa^  At  a  later 
time,  encouraged  by  the  example  of  his  elder  brother  who 
had  come  up  to  walk  the  London  Hospital,  he  conceived 
a  passion  for  the  medical  profession  and  read  every  book 
on  doctoring  he  could  lay  his  hands  on.  He  went 
through  a  phase  of  atheism — again,  probably,  out  of  sheer 
curiosity — until  he  was  judiciously  (so  he  said)  flogged 
out  of  it  by  Boyer.  And  meantime  he  was  reading  met- 
aphysics, and  writing  verses,  in  the  true  spirit  of  the  fut- 
ure Coleridge.  The  lines  he  composed  in  his  sixteenth 
year,  suggested  by  his  habit  of  living  in  the  future  till 
time  present  and  future  became  in  thought  inextricably 
intermingled,  Purely  entitle  him  to  the  name  of  the  "  mar- 
vellous boy,"  as  truly  as  anything  Chatterton  had  written 
at  the  same  age : 

"  On  the  wide  level  of  a  mountain's  head 
(I  knew  not  where,  but  'twas  some  fairy  place), 


t]  THE  TEMPLE  AND  CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL.  13 

Their  pinions,  ostrich-like,  for  sails  outspread, 
Two  lovely  children  run  an  endless  race, 

A  sister  and  a  brother ! 

That  far  outstripp'd  the  other ; 
Yet  ever  runs  she  with  reverted  face. 
And  looks  and  listens  for  the  boy  behind ; 

For  he,  alas !  is  blind ! 
O'er  rough  and  smooth  with  even  step  he  pass'd, 
And  knows  not  whether  he  be  first  or  last." 


A  striking  feature  of  these  lines  is  not  so  much  that 
they  are  not  the  echo  of  any  one  school  of  poetry,  but 
that  in  the  special  metaphysic  of  the  thought,  and  the  pe- 
culiar witchery  of  the  verse,  Coleridge  here  anticipated  his 
maturest  powers.  It  is  on  first  thoughts  strange  that  the 
boy  who  had  read  through  whole  libraries,  "folios  and 
all,"  and  who  could  write  verses  such  as  these,  should  have 
been  so  deeply  stirred  as  we  know  hira  to  have  been  at 
the  age  of  seventeen,  when  the  small  volume  of  fourteen 
sonnets  of  William  Lisle  Bowles  fell  into  his  hands. 
What  was  there,  it  might  well  be  asked,  in  the  poetry  of 
Bowles,  pathetic  and  graceful  as  it  was,  so  to  quicken  the 
poetic  impulse  of  Coleridge,  that  years  afterwards  he 
wrote  of  it  to  a  friend  as  having  "  done  his  heart  more 
good  than  all  the  other  books  he  ever  read,  excepting  his 
Bible?"  It  is  the  fashion  in  the  present  day  to  speak 
slightingly  of  Bowles,  but  his  sonnets  have  unquestionable 
merit.  Their  language  is  melodious  to  a  degree  which 
perhaps  only  Collins  in  that  century  had  surpassed,  and 
it  expressed  a  tender  melancholy,  which  may  have  been 
inspired  also  by  the  study  of  the  same  poet.  But  Cole- 
ridge, the  omnivorous  reader,  can  hardly  have  been  un- 
acquainted with  Gray  and  Collins,  and  the  writer  of  such 
lines  as — 
3 


U  CHARLES  LAMB.  [ch^. 

"  On  the  wide  level  of  a  mountain's  head 
(I  knew  not  where,  but  'twas  some  fairy  place), 


conld  have  had  little  to  learn,  as  to  the  subtler  music  of 
versification,  even  from  the  greatest  models.  But  it  is 
significant  that  Coleridge  couples  these  sonnets  with  the 
Bible,  and  he  could  hardly  have  done  so  without  meaning 
it  to  be  understood  that  Bowles'  sonnets  marked  some 
change  not  purely  artistic  in  his  mind's  growth.  For  the 
melancholy  of  Gray  was  constitutional,  but  the  sadness  of 
Bowles  had  its  root  in  a  close  habit  of  introspection,  and 
dwelling  upon  the  moral  side  of  things.  The  pensive 
beauty  of  such  a  sonnet  as  the  well-known  one  on  the 
Influence  of  Time  on  Grief  wakes  chords  that  are  not 
often  reached  by  the  sentiment  of  the  elder  poets.  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that  at  a  critical  point  of  Coleridge's 
life  his  moral  nature  was  touched  in  ways  for  which  he 
was  profoundly  grateful  by  these  few  poems  of  Bowles. 
He  admits  the  obligation,  indeed,  in  the  first  version  of 
his  sonnet  to  Bowles,  when  he  confesses  that  "  those  soft 
strains "  waked  in  him  "  love  and  sympathy "  as  well  as 
fancy,  and  made  him  henceforth  "  not  callous  to  a  broth- 
er's pains."  And  we  are  justified  in  believing  that  his 
young  companion,  Charles  Lamb,  was  passing  with  him 
along  the  same  path  of  deepening  thoughtfulness.  He, 
too,  had  felt  the  charm  of  Bowles'  tenderness.  In  his 
earliest  letters  to  Coleridge  no  other  name  is  mentioned 
oftener  and  with  more  admiration;  and  writing  to  his 
friend  a  few  years  later,  from  the  "  drudgery  of  the  desk's 
dead  wood  "  at  the  India  House,  Lamb  complains  sorrow- 
fully, "Not  a  soul  loves  Bowles  here:  scarce  one  has 
heard  of  Burns:  few  but  laugh  at  me  for  reading  my 
Testament." 


1.]  THE  TEMPLE  AND  CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL.  15 

It  was  in  the  year  1789,  the  year  of  the  publication  of 
Bowles'  earliest  sonnets,  that  Charles  Lamb  was  removed 
from  Christ's  Hospital,  and  the  companionship  of  the  two 
friends  was  for  a  while  interrupted.  Lamb  had  found  oth- 
er congenial  associates  among  the  Blue  Coats,  and  has  em- 
balmed their  names  in  various  ways  in  his  essays ;  the  two 
Le  Grices  from  Cornwall,  and  James  White,  whose  passion 
was  for  Shakspeare,  and  who  afterwards  compiled  a  collec- 
tion of  letters,  as  between  Falstaff  and  his  friends,  in  which 
he  displayed  some  fancy,  but  chiefly  a  certain  skill  in  tak- 
ing to  pieces  the  phraseology  of  the  humorous  characters 
in  the  historical  plays  and  re-setting  it  in  divers  combina- 
tions. It  was  by  these  and  other  like  accidents  that  the 
tastes  and  powers  of  the  young  Charles  Lamb  were  being 
drawn  forth  in  those  seven  years  of  school-life.  The  Latin 
and  Greek  of  the  Rev.  Matthew  Field,  the  under  grammar- 
master,  even  the  more  advanced  instruction  under  James 
Boyer,  had  a  less  important  bearing  on  the  future  Elia 
than  the  picturesque  surroundings  of  the  Temple,  alternat- 
ing with  those  of  the  foundation  of  Edward  VI.,  and  above 
all,  the  daily  companionship  of  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge. 

Leigh  Hunt,  in  his  autobiography,  has  described  with 
great  humour  and  spirit  the  Christ's  Hospital  of  his  day, 
only  two  or  three  years  later.  Hunt  left  school  at  the  age 
of  fifteen,  when  he  had  attained  the  same  rank  as  Lamb — 
deputy  Grecian — and,  as  he  tells  us,  for  the  same  reason. 
He,  too,  had  an  impediment  in  his  speech.  "  I  did  not 
stammer  half  so  badly  as  I  used,  but  it  was  understood 
that  a  Grecian  was  bound  to  deliver  a  public  speech  before 
he  left  school,  and  to  go  into  the  Church  afterwards ;  and 
as  I  could  do  neither  of  these  things,  a  Grecian  I  could  not 
be."  During  his  seven  years  in  the  school,  Hunt  often 
saw  Charles  Lamb,  when  he  came  to  visit  his  old  school- 


1«  CHARLES  LAMB.  [ohaf.  i. 

fellows,  and  recalled  in  after-life  the  "pensive, brown, hand- 
some, and  kindly  face,"  and  "  the  gait  advancing  with  a 
motion  from  side  to  side,  between  involuntary  unconscious- 
ness and  attempted  ease."  He  dressed  even  then,  Leigh 
Hunt  adds, with  that  "Quaker -like  plainness"  that  dis- 
tinguished him  all  through  life. 

To  leave  school  must  have  been  to  Charles  Lamb  a  bit- 
ter sorrow.  His  aptitude  for  the  special  studies  of  the 
school  was  undeniable,  and  to  part  from  Coleridge  must 
have  been  a  still  heavier  blow.  His  biographers  have  fol- 
lowed Leigh  Hunt  in  pointing  out  that  the  school  exhibi- 
tions to  the  universities  were  given  on  the  implied  condi- 
tion of  the  winners  of  them  proceeding  to  holy  orders,  and 
that  in  Lamb's  case  his  infirmity  of  speech  made  that  im- 
possible. But  there  were  probably  other  reasons,  not  less 
cogent.  It  must  have  been  of  importance  to  his  family 
that  Charles  should,  with  as  little  delay  as  possible,  begin 
to  earn  his  bread.  There  was  poverty  in  his  home,  and 
the  prospect  of  means  becoming  yet  more  straitened. 
There  were  deepening  anxieties  of  still  graver  cast,  as  we 
shall  see  hereafter.  The  youngest  child  of  the  family  re- 
turned to  share  this  poverty  and  these  anxieties,  and  to 
learn  thus  early  the  meaning  of  that  law  of  sacrifice  to 
which  he  so  cheerfully  submitted  for  the  remainder  of  his 
life. 


CHAPTER  11. 

FAMILY  STRUOOLES   AND   SORROWS. 

[1Y89-1796.] 

In  two  of  Lamb's  Essays  of  Elia,  My  Relations^  and  Mach 
ery  End  in  Hertfordshire,  he  has  described  various  mem- 
bers of  his  own  family,  and  among  them  his  brother  John 
and  his  sister  Mary.  These  should  be  carefully  read,  in 
conjunction  with  the  less  studied  utterances  on  the  same 
theme  in  his  letters,  by  those  who  would  understand  the 
conditions  of  that  home  of  which  he  now  became  an  in- 
mate. Of  the  family  of  seven  children  born  in  the  Tem- 
ple to  John  and  Elizabeth  Lamb,  only  three  survived,  the 
two  just  mentioned,  and  Charles.  The  elder  brother,  John, 
at  the  time  of  his  brother's  leaving  school  a  young  man  of 
twenty-six,  held  an  appointment  in  the  South  Sea  House. 
There  was  a  Plumer  in  the  office,  mentioned  by  Lamb  in 
his  essay  on  that  institution,  and  it  was  with  the  Plumer 
family  in  Hertfordshire  that  Lamb's  grandmother  had  been 
house-keeper.  It  was  probably  to  such  an  introduction 
that  John  Lamb  owed  his  original  clerkship  in  the  office, 
and  it  is  evident  that  at  the  time  he  first  comes  under  our 
notice,  his  position  in  the  office  was  fairly  lucrative,  and 
that  the  young  man,  unmarried,  and  of  pleasant  artistic 
tastes,  was  living  by  himself,  enjoying  life,  and  not  trou- 


18  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

bling  himself  too  much  about  his  poor  relations  in  the 
Temple.  The  genial  selfishness  of  his  character  is  de- 
scribed with  curious  frankness  by  Charles,  who  yet  seemed 
to  entertain  a  kind  of  admiration  for  the  well-dressed  dil- 
ettante who  cast  in  this  way  a  kind  of  reflected  light  of 
respectability  upon  his  humble  relatives.  He  even  ad- 
dresses a  sonnet  to  his  brother,  and  applauds  him  for 
keeping  "  the  elder  brother  up  in  state."  There  is  a  touch 
of  sarcasm  here,  perhaps ;  and  there  is  a  sadder  vein  of 
irony  in  the  description  in  My  Relatione  : 

"  It  does  me  good  as  I  walk  towards  the  street  of  my  daily  avoca- 
tion on  some  fine  May  morning,  to  meet  him  marching  in  a  quite  op- 
posite direction,  with  a  jolly  handsome  presence,  and  shining  san- 
guine face  that  indicates  some  purchase  in  his  eye — a  Claude  or  a 
Hobbima — for  much  of  his  enviable  leisure  is  consumed  at  Christie's 
and  Phillips',  or  where  not,  to  pick  up  pictures  and  such  gauds.  On 
these  occasions  he  mostly  stoppeth  me,  to  read  a  short  lecture  on  the 
advantage  a  person  like  me  possesses  above  himself,  in  having  his 
time  occupied  with  business  which  he  must  do  ;  assureth  me  that  he 
often  feels  it  hang  heavy  on  his  hands ;  wishes  he  had  fewer  holidays ; 
and  goes  off  Westward  Ho !  chanting  a  tune  to  Pall  Mall ;  perfectly 
convinced  that  he  has  convinced  me,  while  I  proceed  in  my  opposite 
direction  tuneless." 

We  feel  that  this  picture  needs  no  additional  touches. 
"  Marching  in  a  quite  opposite  direction "  was  what  John 
Lamb  continued  to  do,  in  all  respects,  as  concerned  the 
dutiful  and  home-keeping  members  of  his  family.  It  was 
not  to  him  that  father  and  mother,  sister  or  brother,  were 
to  look  for  help  in  their  great  need.  Wholly  different 
was  the  other  elder  child,  next  to  him  in  age,  Mary  Lamb, 
the  Bridget  Mia  of  the  Essays.  Ten  years  older  than 
Charles,  she  filled  a  position  to  him  in  these  boyish  days 
rather  of  mother  than  of  sister.    It  is  clear  that  these  two 


n.]  FAMILY  STRUGGLES  AND  SORROWS.  19 

children  from  the  earliest  age  depended  much  on  one  anoth- 
er for  sympathy  and  support.  The  mother  never  under- 
stood or  appreciated  the  daughter's  worth,  and  the  father, 
who  seems  to  have  married  late  in  life,  was  already  failing 
in  health  and  powers  when  Charles  left  school.  The  broth- 
er and  sister  were  therefore  thrown  upon  one  another  for 
companionship  and  intellectual  sympathy,  when  school 
friendships  were  for  a  while  suspended.  Mary  Lamb 
shared  from  childhood  her  brother's  taste  for  reading. 
"  She  was  tumbled  early,  by  accident  or  design,  into  a 
spacious  closet  of  good  old  English  reading,  without  much 
selection  or  prohibition,  and  browsed  at  will  upon  that  fair 
and  wholesome  pasturage."  The  spacious  closet  was,  it 
would  seem,  the  library  of  Samuel  Salt,  to  which  both  she 
and  Charles  early  had  access.  It  was  a  blessed  resource 
for  them  in  face  of  the  monotony  and  other  discomforts 
of  their  home  and  against  more  serious  evils.  There  was, 
as  we  have  seen,  a  taint  of  mania  in  the  family,  inherited 
from  the  father's  side.  It  appeared  in  different  shapes  in 
all  three  children,  if  we  are  to  tinist  a  casual  remark  in  one 
of  Charles'  letters  touching  his  brother  John.  But  in  Mary 
Lamb  there  is  reason  to  suppose  that  it  had  been  a  cause 
of  anxiety  to  her  parents  from  an  early  period  of  her  life. 
In  one  of  his  earliest  poems  addressed  to  Charles  Lamb, 
Coleridge  speaks  of  him  creeping  round  a  "  dear-loved 
sister's  bed,  with  noiseless  step,"  soothing  each  pang  with 
fond  solicitude.  These  claims  upon  his  brotherly  watch- 
fulness fell  to  the  lot  of  Charles  while  still  a  boy,  and  they 
were  never  relaxed  during  life.  There  was  a  pathetic  truth 
in  the  prediction  of  Coleridge  which  followed : 

"  Cheerily,  dear  Charles ! 
Thou  thy  best  friend  shalt  cherish  many  a  year." 


£0  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

He  continued  to  devote  himself  to  this,  his  best  friend,  for 
more  than  forty  years,  and  henceforth  the  lives  of  the 
brother  and  sister  are  such  that  the  story  of  the  one  can 
hardly  be  told  apart  from  the  other. 

It  has  been  said  that  Lamb's  first  years  were  passed 
between  the  Temple  and  Christ's  Hospital  —  between 
"  cloister  and  cloister " — but  there  were  happy  holiday 
seasons  when  he  had  glimpses  of  a  very  different  life. 
These  were  spent  with  his  grandmother,  Mary  Field,  at 
the  old  mansion  of  the  Plumer  family,  Blakesware,  closely 
adjoining  the  pleasant  village  of  Widford,  in  Hertford- 
shire. The  Plumers  had  two  residences  in  the  county, 
one  at  Gilston,  and  the  other  just  mentioned,  a  few  miles 
distant.  The  latter  was  the  house  where  the  dowager 
Mrs.  Plumer  and  younger  children  of  the  family  resided. 
Sometimes  there  would  be  no  members  of  the  family  to 
inhabit  it,  and  at  such  times  old  Mrs.  Field,  who  held  the 
post  of  house-keeper  for  the  last  fifty  or  sixty  years  of  her 
life,  reigned  supreme  over  the  old  place.  Her  three  grand- 
children were  then  often  with  her,  and  the  old-fashioned 
mansion,  with  its  decaying  tapestries  and  carved  chimneys, 
together  with  the  tranquil,  rural  beauty  of  the  gardens  and 
the  surrounding  country,  made  an  impression  on  the  child- 
ish imagination  of  Lamb,  which  is  not  to  be  overlooked 
in  considering  the  influences  which  moulded  his  thought 
and  style.  There  were  many  ties  of  family  affection  bind- 
ing him  to  Hertfordshire.  His  grandmother  was  a  native 
of  the  county,  and  in  the  beautiful  essay  called  Mackery 
End  he  has  described  a  visit  paid  in  later  life  to  other  re- 
lations, in  the  neighborhood  of  Wheathampstead.  It  is 
noticeable  how  Lamb,  the  "  scorner  of  the  fields,"  as 
Wordsworth  termed  him,  yet  showed  the  true  poet's  ap- 
preciation of  English  rural  scenery,  whenever  at  least  his 


n.]  FAMILY  STRUGGLES  AND  SORROWa  21 

heart  was  touched  by  any  association  of  it  with  human 
joy  or  sorrow. 

In  1792  Mrs.  Field  died  at  a  good  old  age,  and  lies  bur- 
ied in  the  quiet  church-yard  of  Widford.  Lamb  has  pre- 
served her  memory  in  the  tender  tribute  to  her  virtues, 
The  Orandame^  which  appeared  among  his  earliest  pub- 
lished verses : 

"  On  the  green  hill  top 
Hard  by  the  house  of  prayer,  a  modest  roof, 
And  not  distinguished  from  its  neighbour-bam 
Save  by  a  slender  tapering  length  of  spire, 
The  Grandame  sleeps.    A  plain  stone  barely  tells 
The  name  and  date  to  the  chance  passenger." 

Time  and  weather  have  effaced  even  name  and  date,  but 
the  stone  is  still  pointed  out  in  Widford  church-yard.  The 
old  lady  had  suffered  long  from  an  incurable  disease,  and 
the  young  Charles  Lamb  had  clearly  found  some  of  his 
earliest  religious  impressions  deepened  by  watching  her 
courage  and  resignation : 

"  For  she  had  studied  patience  in  the  school 
Of  Christ ;  much  comfort  she  had  thence  derived 
And  was  a.  follower  of  the  Nazarene." 

With  her  death  the  tie  with  Blakesware  was  not  broken. 
The  family  of  the  Lambs  had  pleasant  relations  with  other 
of  the  Widford  people.  Their  constant  friend,  Mr.  Ran- 
dal Norris,  the  sub -treasurer  of  the  Inner  Temple,  had 
connexions  with  the  place,  and  long  after  the  death  of 
Mrs.  Field  we  find  Lamb  and  his  sister  spending  occasional 
holidays  in  the  neighbourhood. 

At  some  date,  unfixed,  in  the  two  years  following  his 
removal  from  Christ's  Hospital,  Charles  obtained  a  post  of 
some  kind  in  the  South  Sea  House,  where  his  brother  John 
2* 


%%  CHARLES  LAMB.  [osap. 

held  an  appointment.  No  account  of  this  period  of  his 
life  remains  to  us,  except  such  as  can  be  drawn  from  the 
essay  on  the  South  Sea  House,  written  thirty  years  later 
in  the  London  Magazine  as  the  first  of  the  papers  signed 
JSlia.  The  essay  contains  little  or  nothing  about  himself, 
and  we  are  ignorant  as  to  the  duties  and  emoluments  of 
his  situation.  It  was  not  long,  however,  before  he  got 
promotion,  in  the  form  of  a  clerkship  in  the  accountant's 
oflBce  of  the  East  India  Company,  obtained  for  him  through 
the  influence  of  Samuel  Salt.  His  salary  began  at  the  rate 
of  70^.  a  year,  rising  by  gradual  steps,  and  in  the  service 
of  the  East  India  Ck)mpany  Charies  Lamb  continued  for 
the  rest  of  his  working  life. 

Of  these  first  years  of  oflBcial  life,  from  the  date  of  his 
entry  into  the  office  in  April,  1*792,  till  the  spring  of  1796, 
there  is  little  to  be  learned,  save  from  a  few  scattered  allu- 
sions in  the  letters  which  from  this  later  date  have  been 
preserved.  Up  to  the  year  1796  the  family  of  Lamb  con- 
tinued to  live  in  the  Temple,  when  the  increasing  infirmity 
of  John  Lamb  the  elder  made  him  leave  the  service  of  his 
old  employer  and  retire  on  a  small  pension  to  lodgings  in 
Little  Queen  Street,  Holborn.  No  fragment  of  writing  of 
Charles  Lamb  of  earlier  date  than  1795  has  been  preserved. 
His  work  as  a  junior  clerk  absorbed  the  greater  part  of  his 
day  and  of  his  year.  In  his  first  years  of  service  his  an- 
nual holiday  was  a  single  week,  and  this  scanty  breathing- 
space  he  generally  spent  in  his  favourite  Hertfordshire. 
Then  there  were  the  occasional  visits  to  the  theatre,  and  it 
was  the  theatre  which  all  through  life  shared  with  books 
the  keenest  love  of  Lamb  and  his  sister.  He  has  left  us 
an  account,  in  the  essay,  My  First  Play,  of  his  earliest 
experiences  of  this  kind,  beginning  with  Artaxerxes,  and 
proceeding  to  2%e  Lady  of  the  Manor  and  the  Way  of  the 


II.]  FAMILY  STRUGGLES  AND  SOEROWa  S8 

World,  all  seen  by  him  when  he  was  between  six  and  sev* 
en  years  old.  Seven  years  elapsed  before  he  saw  another 
play  (for  play-going  was  not  permitted  to  Christ's  Hospi- 
tal boys),  and  he  admits  that  when  after  that  interval  he 
visited  the  theatre  again,  much  of  its  former  charm  had 
vanished.  The  old  classical  tragedy  and  the  old-world  sen- 
timental comedy  alike  failed  to  satisfy  him,  and  it  was  not 
till  he  first  saw  Mrs.  Siddons  that  the  acted  drama  re- 
asserted its  power.  "The  theatre  became  to  him,  once 
more,"  he  tells  us,  "  the  most  delightful  of  recreations." 
One  of  the  earliest  of  his  sonnets  records  the  impression 
made  upon  him  by  this  great  actress.  And  as  soon  as  we 
are  admitted  through  his  correspondence  with  Coleridge 
and  others  to  know  his  tastes  and  habits,  we  find  how  im- 
portant a  part  the  drama  and  all  its  associations  were  play- 
ing in  the  direction  of  his  genius. 

Nor  was  the  gloom  of  his  home  life  unrelieved  by  occa- 
sional renewals  of  the  intellectual  companionship  he  had 
enjoyed  at  school.  Coleridge  had  gone  up  to  Jesus  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  early  in  1791,  and  except  during  the  six 
months  of  his  soldier's  life  in  the  Light  Dragoons,  remain- 
ed there  for  the  next  four  years.  During  this  time  he 
made  occasional  visits  to  London,  when  it  was  the  great 
pleasure  of  the  two  school-fellows  to  meet  at  a  tavern  near 
Smithfield,  the  "  Salutation  and  Cat "  (probably  a  well- 
known  rallying-point  in  the  old  Christ's  days),  and  there 
to  spend  long  evenings  in  discussion  on  literature  and  the 
other  topics  dear  to  both.  Coleridge  was  now  writing 
poems,  and  finding  a  temporary  home  for  them  in  the 
columns  of  the  Morning  Chronicle.  Among  them  ap- 
peared the  sonnet  on  Mrs.  Siddons,  which  was  thus  prob- 
ably Lamb's  first  appearance  in  print.     Both  the  young 

men  were  clearly  dreaming  of  authorship,  and  Lamb's  first 
O 


S4  CHABLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

avowed  appearance  as  author  was  in  the  first  volume  of 
poems  by  Coleridge,  published  by  Cottle,  of  Bristol,  in  the 
spring  of  the  year  1796.  "The  effusions  signed  C.  L.,"  says 
Coleridge  in  the  preface  to  this  volume,  "  were  written  by 
Mr.  Charles  Lamb  of  the  India  House.  Independently  of 
the  signature,  their  superior  merit  would  have  suflBciently 
distinguished  them."  The  effusions  consisted  of  four  son- 
nets, the  one  already  noticed  on  Mrs.  Siddons,  one  "  writ- 
ten at  midnight  by  the  sea-side  after  a  voyage,"  and  two, 
in  every  way  the  most  noteworthy,  dealing  with  the  one 
love  romance  of  Charles  Lamb's  life.  The  sonnets  have 
no  special  literary  value,  but  the  first  of  these  has  impor- 
tance enough  in  its  bearing  on  Lamb's  character  to  justify 
quotation : 

"  Was  it  some  sweet  device  of  Faery 
That  mocked  my  steps  with  many  a  lonely  glade, 
And  fancied  wanderings  with  a  fair-haired  maid  ? 
Have  these  tilings  been  ?    Or  what  rare  witchery, 
Impregning  with  delights  the  charmed  air, 
Enlightened  up  the  semblance  of  a  smile 
In  those  fine  eyes  ?  methought  they  spake  the  while 
Soft  soothing  things,  which  might  enforce  despair 
To  drop  the  murdering  knife,  and  let  go  by 
His  foul  resolve.    And  does  the  lonely  glade 
Still  court  the  footsteps  of  the  fair-haired  maid  ? 
Still  in  her  locks  the  gales  of  summer  sigh  ? 
While  I  forlorn  do  wander,  reckless  where, 
And  'mid  my  wanderings  meet  no  Anna  there." 

If  the  allusions  in  this  and  the  following  sonnet  stood 
alone,  we  might  well  be  asking,  as  in  the  case  of  Shak- 
speare's  sonnets,  whether  the  situation  was  not  dramatic 
rather  than  autobiographical;  but  we  have  good  reasons 
for  inferring  that  the  Anna,  "the  fair-haired  maid"  of 


n.]  FAMILY  STRUGGLES  AND  SORROWa  26 

these  poems,  had  a  real  existence.  His  first  love  is  re- 
ferred to  constantly  in  later  letters  and  essays  as  Alice 

W n,  and  it  is  easy  to  perceive  that  the  Anna  of  the 

sonnets  and  this  Alice  W n  were  the  same  person. 

In  both  cases  the  fair  hair  and  the  mild,  pale  blue  eyes 
are  the  salient  features.  But  the  sonnets  that  tell  of  these 
tell  also  of  the  "winding  wood-walks  green,"  and 

"  the  little  cottage  which  she  loved, 
The  cottage  which  did  once  my  all  contain." 

From  these  alone  we  might  infer  that  Lamb  had  first 
met  the  subject  of  them,  not  in  London,  but  during  his 
frequent  visits  to  Blakesware.  Lamb  himself,  often  so 
curiously  out-spoken  on  the  subject  of  his  personal  his- 
tory, has  nowhere  directly  told  us  where  he  met  his  Alice, 
but  he  cannot  seriously  have  meant  to  keep  the  secret.  In 
the  essay,  Blakesmoor  m  H sMre^  he  recalls  the  picture- 
gallery  with  the  old  family  portraits,  and  among  them 
"  that  beauty  with  the  cool,  blue,  pastoral  drapery,  and  a 
lamb,  that  hung  next  the  great  bay-window,  with  the  bright 
yellow  Hertfordshire  hair,  so  like  my  Alice  /"  His  "  fair- 
haired  maid "  was  clearly  from  Hertfordshire.  It  will  be 
seen  hereafter  what  light  is  further  thrown  on  the  matter 
by  Lamb  himself.  All  that  we  know  as  certain  is  that 
Lamb,  while  yet  a  boy,  lost  his  heart,  and  that,  whether  the 
course  of  true  love  ran  smooth  or  not,  he  willingly  submit- 
ted to  forego  the  hoped-for  tie,  when  a  claim  upon  his 
devotion  appeared  in  the  closer  circle  of  his  home. 

Unless,  indeed,  a  more  personal  and  even  more  terrible 
occasion  of  this  sacrifice  had  arisen  at  an  earlier  date.  We 
know,  on  his  own  admission,  that  in  the  winter  of  1796- 
'96,  Charles  Lamb  himself  succumbed  to  the  family  mal- 
ady, and  passed  some  weeks  in  confinement.  In  the  earliest 
16 


26  CHARLES  LAMB.  [ohap. 

of  his  letters  that  has  been  preserved,  belonging  to  the 
early  part  of  1796,  he  tells  his  friend  Coleridge  the  sad 
truth : 

"My  life  has  been  somewhat  diversified  of  late.  The  six  weeks 
that  finished  last  year  and  began  this,  your  very  humble  servant 
spent  very  agreeably  in  a  mad-house  at  Hoxton.  I  am  got  somewhat 
rational  now,  and  don't  bite  any  one.  But  mad  I  was !  .  .  . .  Cole- 
ridge, it  may  convince  you  of  my  regard  for  you  when  I  tell  you  my 
bead  ran  on  you  in  my  madness,  as  much  almost  as  on  another  per- 
son, who  I  am  inclined  to  think  was  the  more  immediate  cause  of  my 
temporary  frenzy." 

The  "other  person"  can  have  been  no  other  than  the 
fair-haired  Alice,  and  if  disappointed  love  was  the  imme- 
diate cause  of  his  derangement,  the  discovery  in  him  of 
this  tendency  may  have  served  to  break  oflE  all  relations 
between  the  lovers  still  more  effectually.  Wonderfully 
touching  are  the  lines  which,  as  he  tells  Coleridge  in  the 
same  letter,  were  written  by  him  in  his  prison-house  in  one 
of  his  lucid  intervals : 

"  To  JIT  Sister. 

"  If  from  my  lips  some  angry  accents  fell, 
Peevish  complaint,  or  harsh  reproof  unkind, 
Twas  but  the  error  of  a  sickly  mind 
And  troubled  thoughts,  clouding  the  purer  well. 
And  waters  clear,  of  Reason :  and  for  me 
Let  this  my  verse  the  poor  atonement  be — 
My  verse,  which  thou  to  praise  wert  e'er  inclined 
Too  highly,  and  with  a  partial  eye  to  see 
No  blemish.    Thou  to  me  didst  ever  show 
Kindest  affection  ;  and  would'st  ofttimes  lend 
An  ear  to  the  despairing,  lovesick  lay, 
Weeping  my  sorrows  with  me,  who  repay 
But  ill  the  mighty  debt  of  love  I  owe, 
Mary,  to  thee,  my  sister  and  my  friend." 


n.j  FAMILY  STRUGGLES  AND  SORROWa  27 

The  history  of  many  past  weeks  or  months  seems  writ- 
ten in  these  lines ;  the  history  of  a  hopeless  attachment,  a 
reason  yielding  to  long  distress  of  mind,  and  a  sister's  love 
already  repaying  by  anticipation  the  "  mighty  debt " 
which  in  after  days  it  was  itself  to  owe. 

This  year,  1795-96,  was  indeed  a  memorable  one  in 
the  annals  of  the  brother  and  sister.  The  fortunes  of 
the  Lamb  family  were  at  low  ebb.  They  had  removed  to 
lodgings  in  Little  Queen  Street,  the  mother  a  confirmed 
invalid,  and  the  father  sinking  gradually  into  second  child- 
hood. Charles  had  been  temporarily  under  restraint,  and 
Mary  Lamb,  in  addition  to  the  increasing  labor  of  minis- 
tering to  her  parents,  was  working  for  their  common 
maintenance  by  taking  in  needle-work.  It  is  not  strange 
that  under  this  pressure  her  own  reason,  so  often  threaten- 
ed, at  last  gave  way.  It  was  in  September  of  1796  that 
the  awful  calamity  of  her  life  befell.  A  young  apprentice 
girl,  who  was  at  work  in  the  common  sitting-room  while 
dinner  was  preparing,  appears  to  have  excited  the  latent 
mania.  Mary  Lamb  seized  a  knife  from  the  table,  pursued 
the  girl  round  the  room,  and  finally  stabbed  to  the  heart 
her  mother  who  had  interfered  in  the  girl's  behalf.  It 
was  Charles  Lamb  himself  who  seized  the  unhappy  sister, 
and  wrested  the  knife  from  her  hand,  but  not  before  she 
had  hurled  in  her  rage  other  knives  about  the  room,  and 
wounded,  though  not  fatally,  the  now  almost  imbecile 
father.  The  Times  of  a  few  days  later  relates  that  an  in- 
quest was  held  on  the  following  day,  and  a  verdict  of 
insanity  returned  in  the  case  of  the  unhappy  daughter. 
Lamb's  account  of  the  event  is  given  in  a  letter  to  Cole- 
ridge, of  September  27th : 

"  My  dearest  Friend, — White,  or  some  of  my  friends,  or  the  pub- 
lic papers  by  this  time  may  have  informed  you  of  the  terrible  calam* 


88  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

ides  that  hare  fallen  on  our  family.  I  will  only  give  you  the  out- 
lines :  My  poor  dear,  dearest  sister,  in  a  fit  of  insanity,  has  been  the 
death  of  her  own  mother.  I  was  at  hand  only  time  enough  to  snatch 
the  knife  out  of  her  grasp.  She  is  at  present  in  a  mad-house,  from 
whence  I  fear  she  must  be  moved  to  an  hospital.  God  has  preserved 
to  me  my  senses — I  eat,  and  drink,  and  sleep,  and  have  my  judg- 
ment, I  believe,  very  sound.  My  poor  father  was  slightly  wounded, 
and  I  am  left  to  take  care  of  him  and  my  aunt.  Mr.  Norris,  of  the 
Bluecoat  School,  has  been  very  kind  to  us,  and  we  have  no  other 
friend ;  but,  thank  God,  I  am  very  calm  and  composed,  and  able  to 
do  the  best  that  remains  to  do.  Write  as  religious  a  letter  as  possi- 
ble, but  no  mention  of  what  is  gone  and  done  with.  With  me  the 
'  former  things  are  passed  away,'  and  I  have  something  more  to  do 
than  to  feel 

"  God  Almighty  have  us  well  in  His  keeping. 

"C.  Lamb. 

"  Mention  nothing  of  poetry.  I  have  destroyed  every  vestige  of 
past  vanities  of  that  kind.  Do  as  you  please ;  but  if  you  publish, 
publish  mine  (I  give  free  leave)  without  name  or  initial,  and  never 
send  me  a  book,  I  charge  you." 

A  second  letter  followed  in  less  than  a  week,  in  a  tone 
somewhat  less  forlorn : 

"Your  letter  was  an  inestimable  treasure  to  me.  It  will  be  a 
comfort  to  you,  I  know,  to  know  that  our  prospects  are  somewhat 
brighter.  My  poor  dear,  dearest  sister,  the  unhappy  and  uncon- 
scious instrument  of  the  Almighty's  judgments  on  our  house,  is  re- 
stored to  her  senses ;  to  a  dreadful  sense  and  recollection  of  what 
has  past,  awful  to  her  mind  and  impressive  (as  it  must  be  to  the  end 
of  life),  but  tempered  with  religious  resignation  and  the  reasonings 
of  a  sound  judgment,  which,  in  this  early  stage,  knows  how  to  dis- 
tinguish between  a  deed  committed  in  a  transient  fit  of  frenzy  and 
the  terrible  guilt  of  a  mother's  murder.  I  have  seen  her.  I  found 
her,  this  morning,  calm  and  serene ;  far,  very  far,  from  an  indecent, 
forgetful  serenity;  she  has  a  most  affectionate  and  tender  concern 
for  what  has  happened.  Indeed,  from  the  beginning,  frightful  and 
hopeless  as  her  disorder  seemed,  I  had  confidence  enough  in  her 
Btripgth  of  mind  and  religious  principle,  to  lopk  forward  to  a  time 


n.]  FAMILY  STRUGGLES  AND  SORROWS.  29 

when  even  she  might  recover  tranquillity.  God  be  praised,  Coleridge, 
wonderful  as  it  is  to  tell,  I  have  never  once  been  otherwise  than  col- 
lected and  calm ;  even  on  the  dreadful  day,  and  in  the  midst  of  the 
terrible  scene,  I  preserved  a  tranquillity  which  by-standers  may  havo 
construed  into  indifference — a  tranquillity  not  of  despair.  Is  it  folly 
or  sin  in  me  to  say  that  it  was  a  religious  principle  that  most  sup- 
ported me?  I  allow  much  to  other  favourable  circumstances.  I 
felt  that  I  had  something  else  to  do  than  to  regret.  On  that  fe-st 
evening,  my  aunt  was  lying  insensible,  to  all  appearance  like  one 
dying  —  my  father,  with  his  poor  forehead  plastered  over,  from  a 
wound  he  had  received  from  a  daughter  dearly  loved  by  him,  who 
loved  him  no  less  dearly — ^my  mother  a  dead  and  murdered  corpse 
in  the  next  room — yet  was  I  wonderfully  supported.  I  closed  not 
my  eyes  in  sleep  that  night,  but  lay  without  terrors  and  without  de- 
spair. I  have  lost  no  sleep  since.  I  had  been  long  used  not  to  rest 
in  things  of  sense ;  had  endeavoured  after  a  comprehension  of  mind, 
tmsatisfied  with  the  '  ignorant  present  time,'  and  this  kept  me  up. 
I  had  the  whole  weight  of  the  family  thrown  on  me ;  for  my  brother, 
little  disposed  (I  speak  not  without  tenderness  for  him)  at  any  time 
to  take  care  of  old  age  and  infirmities,  had  now,  with  his  bad  leg,  an 
exemption  from  such  duties,  and  I  was  now  left  alone.  .  .  . 

"  Our  friends  here  have  been  very  good.  Sam  Le  Grice,  who  was 
then  in  town,  was  with  me  the  three  or  four  first  days,  and  was  as  a 
brother  to  me ;  gave  up  every  hour  of  his  time,  to  the  very  hurting 
of  his  health  and  spirits,  in  constant  attendance  and  humouring  my 
poor  father ;  talked  with  him,  read  to  him,  played  at  cribbage  with 
him  (for  so  short  is  the  old  man's  recollection  that  he  was  playing  at 
cards,  as  though  nothing  had  happened,  while  the  coroner's  inquest 
was  sitting  over  the  way).  Samuel  wept  tenderly  when  he  went 
away,  for  his  mother  wrote  him  a  very  severe  letter  on  his  loitering 
80  long  in  town,  and  he  was  forced  to  go.  Mr.  Norris,  of  Christ's 
Hospital,  has  been  as  a  father  to  me ;  Mrs.  Norris  as  a  mother, 
though  we  had  few  claims  on  them.  A  gentleman,  brother  to  my 
godmother,  from  whom  we  never  had  right  or  reason  to  expect  any 
such  assistance,  sent  my  father  20?. ;  and  to  crown  all  these  God's 
blessings  to  our  family  at  such  a  time,  an  old  lady,  a  cousin  of  my 
father's  and  aunt's,  a  gentlewoman  of  fortune,  is  to  take  my  aunt 
and  make  her  comfortable  for  the  short  remainder  of  her  days.  My 
aunt  is  recovered,  and  as  well  as  ever,  and  highly  pleased  at  thoughts 


80  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

of  going ;  and  has  gcneronsly  given  up  the  interest  of  her  little  mon- 
ey (which  was  formerly  paid  my  father  for  her  board)  wholly  and 
solely  to  my  sister's  use.  Reckoning  this,  we  have,  Daddy  and  I,  for 
our  two  selves  and  an  old  maid-servant  to  look  after  him  when  I  am 
out,  which  will  be  necessary,  170/.,  or  180/.  rather,  a  year,  out  of 
which  we  can  spare  60Z.  or  60Z.  at  least  for  Mary  while  she  stays  at 
Islington,  where  she  must  and  shall  stay  during  her  father's  life,  for 
his  and  her  comfort.  I  know  John  will  make  speeches  about  it,  but 
she  shall  not  go  into  an  hospital.  The  good  lady  of  the  mad-house, 
and  her  daughter — ^an  elegant,  sweet-behaved  young  lady — love  her 
and  are  taken  with  her  amazingly ;  and  I  know  from  her  own  mouth 
she  loves  them,  and  longs  to  be  with  them  as  much.  Poor  thing! 
they  say  she  was  but  the  other  morning  saying  she  knew  she  must 
go  to  Bethlehem  for  life;  that  one  of  her  brothers  would  have  it 
so,  but  the  other  would  wish  it  not,  but  be  obliged  to  go  with  the 
stream;  that  she  had  often  as  she  passed  Bethlehem  thought  it 
likely,  '  here  it  may  be  my  fate  to  end  my  days,'  conscious  of  a 
certain  Mightiness  in  her  poor  head  oftentimes,  and  mindful  of  more 
than  one  severe  illness  of  that  nature  before.  A  legacy  of  100/., 
which  my  father  will  have  at  Christmas,  and  this  20/.  I  mention- 
ed before,  with  what  is  in  the  house,  will  much  more  than  set  us 
clear.  If  my  father,  an  old  servant-maid,  and  I,  can't  live,  and 
live  comfortably,  on  130/.  or  120/.  a  year,  we  ought  to  burn  by  slow 
fires;  and  I  almost  would,  that  Mary  might  not  go  into  an  hos- 
pitaL  Let  me  not  leave  one  unfavourable  impression  on  your  mind 
respecting  my  brother.  Since  this  has  happened  he  has  been 
very  kind  and  brotherly,  but  I  fear  for  his  mind.  He  has  taken 
his  ease  in  the  world,  and  is  not  fit  himself  to  struggle  with  difficul- 
ties, nor  has  much  accustomed  himself  to  throw  himself  into  their 
way ;  and  I  know  his  language  is  already,  "  Charles,  you  must  take 
care  of  yourself,  you  must  not  abridge  yourself  of  a  single  pleasure 
you  have  been  used  to,"  &c.,  &c.,  and  in  that  style  of  talking.  But 
you,  a  necessarian,  can  respect  a  difference  of  mind,  and  love  what 
is  amiable  in  a  character  not  perfect.  He  has  been  very  good,  but 
I  fear  for  his  mind.  Thank  God,  I  can  unconnect  myself  with  him, 
and  shall  manage  all  my  father's  monies  in  future  myself  if  I  take 
charge  of  Daddy,  which  poor  John  has  not  even  hinted  a  wish,  at 
any  future  time  even,  to  share  with  me.  The  lady  at  this  mad-house 
assures  me  that  I  may  dismiss  immediately  both  doctor  and  apothe* 


n.]  FAMILY  STRUGGLES  AND  SORROWS.  81 

cary,  retaining  occasionally  a  composing  draught  or  so  for  a  while ; 
and  there  is  a  less  expensive  establishment  in  her  house,  where  she 
will  not  only  have  a  room  and  nurse  to  herself  for  50^,  or  guineas  a 
year — the  outside  would  be  60^. — you  know  by  economy  how  much 
more  even  I  shall  be  able  to  spare  for  her  comforts.  She  will,  I 
fancy,  if  she  stays  make  one  of  the  family,  rather  than  of  the  pa- 
tients ;  the  old  and  young  ladies  I  like  exceedingly,  and  she  lovea 
dearly ;  and  they,  as  the  saying  is,  take  to  her  extraordinarily,  if  it 
is  extraordinary  that  people  who  see  my  sister  should  love  her.  Of 
all  the  people  I  ever  saw  in  the  world,  my  poor  sister  was  most  and 
thoroughly  devoid  of  the  quality  of  selfishness.  I  will  enlarge  upon 
her  qualities,  dearest  soul,  in  a  future  letter  for  my  own  comfort,  for 
I  understand  her  thoroughly ;  and  if  I  mistake  not,  in  the  most  try- 
ing situation  that  a  human  being  can  be  found  in,  she  will  be  found 
(I  speak  not  with  suflBcient  humility,  I  fear,  but  humanly  and  fool- 
ishly speaking)  she  will  be  found,  I  trust,  uniformly  great  and  ami- 
able. God  keep  her  in  her  present  mind,  to  whom  be  thanks  and 
praise  for  all  His  dispensations  to  mankind." 

It  is  necessary  for  the  full  understanding  of  what  Charles 
Lamb  was,  and  of  the  life  that  lay  before  him,  that  this 
deeply  interesting  account  should  be  given  in  his  own 
words.  Anything  that  a  biographer  might  add  would  only 
weaken  the  picture  of  courage,  dutifulness,  and  affection 
here  presented.  The  only  fitting  sequel  to  it  is  the  his- 
tory of  the  remaining  five-and-thirty  years  in  which  he 
fulfilled  so  nobly  and  consistently  his  self-imposed  task. 

That  task  was  made  lighter  to  him  than  in  the  natural 
dejection  of  the  first  sad  moments  he  could  have  dared  to 
hope.  The  poor  old  father  survived  the  mother  but  a  few 
months,  and  passed  quietly  out  of  life  early  in  the  follow- 
ing year.  The  old  aunt,  who  did  not  long  find  a  home 
with  the  capricious  relative  who  had  undertaken  the  charge 
of  her,  returned  to  Charles  and  his  father,  only,  however, 
to  survive  her  brother  a  few  weeks.  Charles  was  now  free 
to  consult  his  own  wishes  as  to  the  future  care  of  his  siar 


82  GHABLES  LAMB.  [chap,  n 

ter.  She  was  still  in  the  asylum  at  Hoxton,  and  it  was  his 
earnest  desire  that  she  might  return  to  live  with  him.  By 
certain  conditions  and  arrangements  between  him  and  the 
proper  authorities,  her  release  from  confinement  was  ulti- 
mately brought  about,  and  the  brother's  guardianship  was 
accepted  as  sufficient  for  the  future.  She  returned  to  share 
his  solitude  for  the  remainder  of  his  life.  The  mania 
which  had  once  attacked  Charles,  never  in  his  case  re- 
turned. Either  the  shock  of  calamity,  or  the  controlling 
power  of  the  vow  he  had  laid  on  himself,  overmastered  the 
inherited  tendency.  But  in  the  case  of  Mary  Lamb  it  re- 
turned at  frequent  intervals  through  life,  never  again,  hap- 
pily, with  any  disastrous  result.  The  attacks  seem  to  have 
been  generally  attended  with  f orewamings,  which  enabled 
the  brother  and  sister  to  take  the  necessary  measures,  and 
a  friend  of  the  Lambs  has  related  how  on  one  occasion  he 
met  the  brother  and  sister,  at  such  a  season,  walking  hand 
in  hand  across  the  fields  to  the  old  asylum,  both  bathed 
in  tears. 


CHAPTER  m. 

riBST   EXPERIMENTS   IN   LITERATURB. 
[1796-1800.] 

Early  in  1797  Charles  Lamb  and  his  sister  began  their 
life  of  "dual  loneliness."  But  during  these  first  years 
the  brother's  loneliness  was  often  unshared.  Much  of 
Mary  Lamb's  life  was  passed  in  visits  to  the  asylum,  and 
the  mention  of  her  successive  attacks  is  of  melancholy 
recurrence  in  Charles'  letters.  Happily  for  the  brother's 
sanity  of  mind,  he  was  beginning  to  find  friends  and  sym- 
pathies in  new  directions.  What  books  had  been  to  him 
all  his  life,  and  what  education  he  had  been  finding  in 
them,  is  evident  from  his  earliest  extant  letters.  His 
published  correspondence  begins  in  1796,  with  a  letter  to 
Coleridge,  then  at  Bristol,  and  from  this  and  other  letters 
of  the  same  year  we  see  the  first  signs  of  that  variety  of 
literary  taste  so  noteworthy  in  a  young  man  of  twenty- 
one.  The  letters  of  this  year  are  mainly  on  critical  sub- 
jects. He  encloses  his  own  sonnets,  and  points  out  the 
passages  in  elder  writers,  Parnell  or  Cowley,  to  which  he 
has  been  indebted.  Or  he  acknowledges  poems  of  Cole- 
ridge, sent  for  his  criticism,  and  proceeds  to  express  his 
opinion  on  them  with  frankness.  He  had  been  intro- 
duced to  Southey,  by  Coleridge,  some  time  in  1795,  and 
he  writes  to  the  latter,  "  With  Joan  of  Arc  I  have  been 
delighted,  amazed;   I  had  not  presumed  to  expect  any- 


Si  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

thing  of  such  excellence  from  Southey.  Why,  the  poem 
is  alone  suflScient  to  redeem  the  character  of  the  age  we 
live  in  from  the  imputation  of  degenerating  in  poetry, 
were  there  no  such  beings  extant  as  Burns,  Bowles,  and 
Cowper,  and  — ;  fill  up  the  blank  how  you  please."  It 
is  noticeable  also  how  prompt  the  young  man  was  to  dis- 
cover the  real  significance  of  the  poetic  revival  of  the  lat- 
ter years  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Bums  he  elsewhere 
mentions  at  this  time  to  Coleridge  in  stronger  terms  of 
enthusiasm  as  having  been  the  "  God  of  my  idolatry,  as 
Bowles  was  of  yours,"  nor  was  he  less  capable  of  appre- 
ciating the  "divine  chit-chat"  of  Cowper.  The  real 
greatness  of  Wordsworth  he  was  one  of  the  earliest  to 
discover  and  to  proclaim.  And  at  the  same  time  his  im- 
agination was  being  stirred  by  the  romantic  impulse  that 
was  coming  from  Germany.  "  Have  you  read,"  he  asks 
Coleridge,  "the  ballad  called  'Leonora'  in  the  second 
number  of  the  Monthly  Magazine?  If  you  have!!! 
There  is  another  fine  song,  from  the  same  author  (Bur- 
ger) in  the  third  number,  of  scarce  inferior  merit"  But 
still  more  remarkable  in  the  intellectual  history  of  so 
young  a  man  is  the  acquaintance  he  shows  with  the  ear- 
lier English  authors,  at  a  time  when  the  revival  of  Shak- 
spearian  study  was  comparatively  recent,  and  when  the 
other  Elizabethan  dramatists  were  all  but  unknown  save 
to  the  archaeologist.  We  must  suppose  that  the  library 
of  Samuel  Salt  was  more  than  usually  rich  in  old  folios, 
for  certainly  Lamb  had  not  only  "  browsed "  (to  use  his 
own  expression),  but  had  read  and  criticized  deeply,  as 
well  as  discursively.  In  a  letter  to  Coleridge  of  this  same 
year,  1796,  he  quotes  with  enthusiasm  the  rather  artificial 
lines  of  Massinger  in  A  very  Woman,  pointing  out  the 
"  fine  effect  of  the  double  endings :" 


m.]  FIRST  EXPERIMENTS  IN  LITERATURK  86 

"  Not  far  from  where  my  father  lives,  a  lady, 
A  neighbour  by,  blest  with  as  great  a  beauty 

'  As  nature  durst  bestow  without  undoing. 
Dwelt,  and  most  happily,  as  I  thought  then, 
And  blest  the  house  a  thousand  times  she  dwelt  In. 
This  beauty,  in  the  blossom  of  my  youth. 
When  my  first  fire  knew  no  adulterate  incense, 
Nor  I  no  way  to  flatter  but  my  fondness. 
In  all  the  bravery  my  friends  could  show  me, 
In  all  the  faith  my  innocence  could  give  me. 
In  the  best  language  my  true  tongue  could  tell  m^ 
And  all  the  broken  sighs  my  sick  heart  lend  me, 
I  sued  and  served ;  long  did  I  serve  this  lady, 
Long  was  my  travail,  long  my  trade  to  win  her; 
With  all  the  duty  of  my  soul  I  served  her.'" 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher  he  quotes  with  no  less  delight, 
"  in  which  authors  I  can't  help  thinking  there  is  a  greater 
richness  of  poetical  fancy  than  in  any  one,  Shakspeare 
excepted."  Again,  he  asks  the  same  inseparable  friend, 
"  Among  all  your  quaint  readings  did  you  ever  light  upon 
Walton^ s  Complete  Angler?  I  asked  you  the  question 
once  before;  it  breathes  the  very  spirit  of  innocence,  pu- 
rity, and  simplicity  of  heart ;  there  are  many  choice  old 
verses  interspersed  in  it :  it  would  sweeten  a  man's  tem- 
per at  any  time  to  read  it:  it  would  Christianize  every 
discordant  angry  passion."  And  while  thus  discursive  in 
his  older  reading,  he  was  hardly  less  so  in  the  literature  of 
his  own  century.  He  had  been  fascinated  by  the  Confes- 
sions of  Rousseau,  and  was  for  a  time  at  least  under  the 
influence  of  the  sentimental  school  of  novelists,  the  follow- 
ers of  Richardson  and  Sterne  in  England.     So  varied  was 

'  These  lines  are  interesting  as  having  been  chosen  by  Lamb  for  a 
"  motto  "  to  his  first  published  poems.  As  so  used,  they  clearly  bord 
a  reference  to  hia  own  patient  wooing  at  that  time. 


86  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chae 

the  field  of  authors  and  subjects  on  which  his  style  was 
being  fonned  and  his  fancy  nourished. 

Long  afterwards,  in  his  essay  on  Books  and  Reading^  he 
boasted  that  he  could  read  anything  which  he  called  a 
book.  "  I  have  no  repugnances.  Shaftesbury  is  not  too 
genteel  for  me,  nor  Jonathan  Wild  too  low."  But  this 
versatility  of  sympathy,  which  was  at  the  root  of  so  large 
a  part  of  both  matter  and  manner  when  he  at  length  dis- 
covered where  his  real  strength  lay,  had  the  effect  of  de- 
laying that  discovery  for  some  time.  His  first  essays  in 
literature  were  mainly  imitative,  and  though  there  is  not 
one  of  them  that  is  without  his  peculiar  charm,  or  that  a 
lover  of  Charles  Lamb  would  willingly  let  die,  they  are 
more  interesting  from  the  fact  of  their  authorship,  and 
from  the  light  they  throw  on  the  growth  of  Lamb's  mind, 
than  for  their  intrinsic  value. 

Meantime,  his  life  in  the  lonely  Queen  Street  lodging 
was  cheered  by  the  acquisition  of  some  new  friends,  chiefly 
introduced  by  Coleridge.  He  had  known  Southey  since 
1795,  and  some  time  in  the  following  year,  or  early  in 
1797,  he  had  formed  a  closer  bond  of  sympathy  with 
Charles  Lloyd,  son  of  a  banker  of  Birmingham,  a  young 
man  of  poetic  taste  and  melancholy  temperament,  who  had 
taken  up  his  abode,  for  the  sake  of  intellectual  compan- 
ionship, with  Coleridge  at  Bristol.  One  of  the  first  results 
of  this  companionship  was  a  second  literary  venture  in 
which  the  new  friend  took  a  share.  A  second  edition  of 
Poems  by  S.  T.  Coleridge,  to  which  are  now  added  Poems 
by  Charles  Lamb  and  Charles  Lloyd,  appeared  at  Bristol, 
in  the  summer  of  1*797,  published  by  Coleridge's  devoted 
admirer,  Joseph  Cottle. 

"  There  were  inserted  in  my  former  edition,"  writes 
Coleridge  in  the  preface,  "  a  few  sonnets  of  my  friend  and 


in.]  FIRST  EXPERIMENTS  IN  LITERATURR  87 

old  school-fellow,  Charles  Lamh.  He  has  now  communi- 
cated to  me  a  complete  collection  of  all  his  poems ;  quae 
qui  non  prorsus  amet,  ilium  omnes  et  virtutes  et  veneres 
odere."  The  phrase  is  a  trifle  grandiloquent  to  describe 
the  short  list — some  fifteen  in  all — of  sonnets  and  occa- 
sional verses  here  printed.  Nor  is  there  anything  in 
their  style  to  indicate  the  influence  of  new  models.  A 
tender  grace  of  the  type  of  his  old  favourite,  Bowles,  is 
still  their  chief  merit,  and  they  are  interesting  as  show- 
ing how  deeply  the  events  of  the  past  few  years  had  stir- 
red the  religious  side  of  Charles  Lamb's  nature.  A  re- 
view of  the  day  characterized  the  manner  of  Lamb  and 
Lloyd  as  "plaintive,"  and  the  epithet  is  not  ill-chosen. 
Lamb  was  still  living  chiefly  in  the  past,  and  the  thought 
of  his  sister,  and  recollection  of  the  pious  "Grandame" 
in  Hertfordshire,  with  kindred  memories  of  his  own  child- 
hood and  disappointed  affections,  make  the  subject-mat- 
ter of  almost  all  the  verse.  A  little  allegorical  poem,  with 
the  title  of  "  A  Vision  of  Repentance,"  relegated  to  an 
appendix  in  this  same  volume,  marks  the  most  sacred  con- 
fidence that  Lamb  ever  gave  to  the  world  as  to  his  medi- 
tations on  the  mystery  of  evil. 

It  is  unlikely  that  this  little  venture  brought  any  profit 
to  its  authors,  or  that  a  subsequent  volume  of  blank  verse 
by  Lamb  and  Lloyd  in  the  following  year  was  more  remu- 
nerative. To  Lloyd  the  question  was  doubtless  of  less  im- 
portance ;  but  Lamb  was  anxious  for  his  sister's  sake  to 
add  to  his  scanty  income,  and  with  this  view  he  resolved 
to  make  an  experiment  in  prose  fiction.  In  the  year  1798 
he  composed  his  little  story,  bearing  the  title,  as  originally 
issued,  of  A  Tale  of  Rosamund  Gray  and  Old  Blind  Mar' 
garet. 

This  "  miniature  romance,"  as  Talfourd  calls  it,  is  per* 
3 


S8  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chip. 

haps  better  known,  after  the  Essays  of  Elia,  than  any  of 
Lamb's  writings,  and  the  secret  of  its  charm,  in  the  face 
of  improbabilities  and  unrealities  of  many  kinds,  is  one  of 
the  curiosities  of  literature.  The  story  itself  is  built  up 
of  the  most  heterogeneous  materials.  The  idea  of  the 
story,  the  ruin  of  a  village  maiden,  Rosamund  Gray,  by 
A  melodramatic  villain  with  the  *'  uncommon "  name  of 
Matravis,  was  suggested  to  Lamb,  as  he  admits  in  a  letter 
to  Southey,  by  a  "foolish"  (and  it  must  be  added,  a  very 
scurrilous)  old  ballad  about  "an  old  woman  clothed  in 
grey."  The  name  of  his  heroine  he  borrowed  from  some 
verses  of  his  friend  Lloyd's  (not  included  in  their  joint 
volume),  and  that  of  the  villain  from  one  of  the  ruflSans 
employed  to  murder  the  king  in  Marlowe's  Edward  the 
Second — that  death-scene  which  he  afterwards  told  the 
world  "  moved  pity  and  terror  beyond  any  scene  ancient 
or  modem  "  with  which  he  was  acquainted.  The  conduct 
of  the  little  story  bears  strong  traces  of  the  influence  of 
Richardson  and  Mackenzie,  and  a  rather  forced  reference 
to  the  latter's  Julia  de  Rouhigne  seems  to  show  where  he 
had  lately  been  reading.  A  portion  of  the  narrative  is 
conducted  by  correspondence  between  the  two  well-bred 
young  ladies  of  the  story,  and  when  one  of  them  begins  a 
letter  to  her  cousin, "  Health,  innocence,  and  beauty  shall 
be  thy  bridesmaids,  my  sweet  cousin,"  we  are  at  once 
aware  in  what  school  of  polite  letter-writing  the  author 
had  studied.  After  the  heroine,  the  two  principal  char- 
acters are  a  brother  and  sister,  Allan  and  Elinor  Clare, 
the  relation  between  whom  (the  sister  is  represented  as 
just  ten  years  older  than  her  brother)  is  borrowed  almost 
without  disguise  from  that  of  Lamb  and  his  sister  Mary. 
"  Elinor  Clare  was  the  best  good  creature,  the  least  selfish 
human  being  I  ever  knew,  always  at  work  for  other 


in.]  FIRST  EXPERIMENTS  IN  LITERATURE.  89 

people's  good,  planning  other  people's  happiness,  contin- 
ually forgetful  to  consult  for  her  own  personal  gratifica- 
tions, except  indirectly  in  the  welfare  of  another;  while 
her  parents  lived,  the  most  attentive  of  daughters;  since 
they  died,  the  kindest  of  sisters.  I  never  knew  but  one 
like  her."  There  is  besides  a  school-fellow  of  Allan's,  who 
precedes  him  to  college,  evidently  a  recollection  of  the 
school-friendship  with  Coleridge.  But  still  more  signifi- 
cant, as  showing  the  personal  element  in  the  little  ro- 
mance, is  the  circumstance  that  Lamb  lays  the  scene  of  it 
in  that  Hertfordshire  village  of  Widford  where  so  many 
of  his  own  happiest  hours  had  been  spent,  and  that  the 
heroine,  Rosamund  Gray,  is  drawn  with  those  features  on 
which  he  was  never  weary  of  dwelling  in  the  object  of  his 
own  boyish  passion.  Rosamund,  with  the  pale  blue  eyes 
and  the  "yellow  Hertfordshire  hair,"  is  but  a  fresh  copy 
of  his  Anna  and  his  Alice.  That  Rosamund  Gray  had 
an  actual  counterpart  in  real  life  seems  certain,  and  the 
little  group  of  cottages,  in  one  of  which  she  dwelt  with 
her  old  grandmother,  is  still  shown  in  the  village  of  Wid- 
ford, about  half  a  mile  from  the  site  of  the  old  mansion  of 
Blakesware.  And  it  is  the  tradition  of  the  village,  and 
believed  by  those  who  have  the  best  means  of  judging, 
that  "Rosamund  Gray"  (her  real  name  was  equally  re- 
mote from    this,  and  from  Alice  W n)  was  Charles 

Lamb's  first  and  only  love.  Her  fair  hair  and  eyes,  her 
goodness,  and  (we  may  assume)  her  poverty,  were  drawn 
from  life.  The  rest  of  the  story  in  which  she  bears  a 
part  is  of  course  pure  fiction.  The  real  Anna  of  the 
sonnets  made  a  prosperous  marriage,  and  lived  to  a  good 
old  age. 

As  if  Lamb  were  resolved  to  give  his  little  tale  the 

character  of  personal  "  confessions,"  he  has  contrived  to 
D 


40  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

introduce  into  it,  by  quotation  or  allusion,  all  his  favourite 
writers,  from  Walton  and  Wither  to  Mackenzie  and  Bums. 
But  of  more  interest  from  this  point  of  view  than  any 
resemblances  of  detail  is  the  shadow,  as  of  recent  calamity, 
that  rests  upon  the  story,  and  the  strain  of  religious  emo- 
tion that  pervades  it.  It  is  this  that  gives  the  romance, 
conventional  as  it  is  for  the  most  part  in  its  treatment  of 
life  and  manners,  its  real  attractiveness.  It  is  redolent  of 
Lamb's  native  sweetness  of  heart,  delicacy  of  feeling,  and 
undefinable  charm  of  style.  And  these  qualities  did  not 
altogether  fail  to  attract  attention.  The  little  venture 
was  a  moderate  success,  and  brought  its  author  some 
**  few  guineas."  One  tribute  to  its  merits  was  paid  many 
years  later,  which,  we  may  hope,  did  not  fail  to  reach  the 
author.  Shelley,  writing  to  Leigh  Hunt  from  Leghorn, 
in  1819,  and  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  a  parcel  of 
books,  adds,  "  With  it  came,  too.  Lamb's  works.  What  a 
lovely  thing  is  his  Rosamund  Gray!  How  much  knowl- 
edge of  the  sweetest  and  deepest  part  of  our  nature  in  it ! 
When  I  think  of  such  a  mind  as  Lamb's,  when  I  see  how 
unnoticed  remain  things  of  such  exquisite  and  complete 
perfection,  what  should  I  hope  for  myself,  if  I  had  not 
higher  objects  in  view  than  fame  ?" 

There  is  scanty  material  for  the  biographer  of  Lamb  and 
his  sister  during  these  first  four  years  of  struggling  pover- 
ty. The  few  events  that  varied  their  monotonous  life  are 
to  be  gathered  from  the  letters  to  Coleridge  and  Southey, 
written  during  this  period.  The  former  was  married,  and 
living  at  Nether  Stowey,  near  Bristol,  where  Charles  and 
Mary  Lamb  paid  him  apparently  their  first  visit,  during 
one  of  Charles'  short  holidays  in  the  summer  of  1797. 
This  visit  was  made  memorable  by  a  slight  accident  that 
befell  Coleridge  on  the  day  of  their  arrival,  and  forced 


m.]  FIRST  EXPERIMENTS  IN  LITERATURE.  41 

him  to  remain  at  home  while  his  visitors  explored  the  sur- 
rounding  country.  Left  alone  in  his  garden,  he  composed 
the  curiously  Wordsworthian  lines,  bearing  for  title  (he 
was  perhaps  reminded  of  Ferdinand,  in  the  Tempest), 
"This  lime-tree  bower  my  prison,"  in  which  he  apostro- 
phizes Lamb  as  the  "  gentle-hearted  Charles,"  and  addresses 
him  as  one  who  had 

"  Hungered  after  nature,  many  a  year 
In  the  great  city  pent,  winning  thy  way 
With  sad  and  patient  zeal,  through  evil  and  pain 
And  strange  calamity." 

Charles  did  not  quite  relish  the  epithet  "  gentle-heart- 
ed," and  showed  that  he  winced  under  a  title  that  savoured 
a  little  of  pity  or  condescension.  Indeed,  it  is  evident,  in 
spite  of  the  real  affection  that  Lamb  never  ceased  to  feel 
for  Coleridge,  that  the  relations  between  the  friends  were 
often  strained  during  these  earlier  days.  This  year,  1797, 
was  that  of  the  joint  volume,  and  the  mutual  criticism  in- 
dulged so  freely  by  both  was  leaving  a  little  soreness  be- 
hind. Then  there  was  the  question  of  precedence  between 
Lamb  and  Lloyd  in  this  same  volume,  which  was  settled 
in  Lloyd's  favour,  not  without  a  few  pangs,  confessed  by 
Lamb  himself.  And  when,  in  the  following  year,  Cole- 
ridge was  on  the  eve  of  his  visit  to  Germany  with  the 
Wordsworths,  a  foolish  message  of  his,  "  If  Lamb  requires 
any  knowledge,  let  him  apply  to  me,"  had  been  repeated 
to  Lamb  by  some  injudicious  friend,  and  did  not  tend  to 
improve  matters.  Lamb  retaliated  by  sending  Coleridge 
a  grimly  humorous  list  of  "  Theses  quaedam  Theologicae," 
to  be  by  him  "  defended  or  oppugned  (or  both)  at  Leipsic 
or  Gottingen."  Numbers  five  and  six  in  this  list  may  be 
given  as  a  sample.     "  Whether  the  higher  order  of  Ser- 


42  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

aphim  illuminati  ever  sneer  ?"  "  WhetHer  pure  intelli- 
gences can  love,  or  whether  they  can  love  anything  besides 
pure  intellect?"  The  rest  are  in  the  same  vein,  and  if 
they  have  any  point  at  all,  it  must  lie  in  an  allusion  to 
certain  airs  of  lofty  superiority  in  which  Coleridge  had 
indulged  to  the  annoyance  of  his  friend.  There  was  a 
temporary  soreness  in  the  heart  of  Charles  on  parting  with 
his  old  companion.  There  had  been  a  grievance  of  the 
same  kind  before.  It  had  been  bitterly  repented  of,  even 
in  a  flood  of  tears.  To  the  beginning  of  this  year,  1798, 
belong  the  touching  verses  composed  in  the  same  spirit 
of  self -confession  that  has  marked  so  much  of  his  writ- 
ing up  to  this  period,  about  the  "  old  familiar  faces."  In 
their  earliest  shape  they  are  more  directly  autobiographical. 
Lamb  afterwards  omitted  the  first  stanza,  and  gave  the  lines 
a  less  personal  character.  The  precise  occasion  of  their 
being  written  seems  uncertain,  but  the  reference  to  the 
friend  whom  he  had  so  nearly  thrown  away,  in  a  moment 
of  pique,  is  unmistakable : 

"  Where  are  they  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces  ? 
I  had  a  mother,  but  she  died,  and  left  me — 
Died  prematurely  in  a  day  of  horrors — 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces. 

"  I  have  had  playmates,  I  have  had  companions 
In  my  days  of  childhood,  in  my  joyful  school-days, 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces. 

"  I  have  been  laughing,  I  have  been  carousing, 
Drinking  late,  sitting  late,  with  my  bosom  croniea— 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces. 

**  I  loved  a  love  once,  fairest  among  women. 
Closed  are  her  doors  on  me,  I  must  not  see  her— 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces. 


m.]  FIRST  EXPERIMENTS  IN  LITERATURE.  43 

"  I  had  a  friend,  a  kinder  friend  has  no  man. 
Like  an  ingrate,  I  left  my  friend  abruptly ! 
Left  him  to  muse  on  the  old  familiar  faces. 

"  Ghost-like  I  paced  round  the  haunts  of  my  childhood. 
Earth  seemed  a  desert  I  was  bound  to  traverse, 
Seeking  to  find  the  old  familiar  faces. 

"  Friend  of  my  bosom,  thou  more  than  a  brother ; 
Why  wert  not  thou  bom  in  my  father's  dwelling, 
So  might  we  talk  of  the  old  familiar  faces. 

"  For  some  they  have  died,  and  some  they  have  left  ms, 
And  some  are  taken  from  me,  all  are  departed ; 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces." 


The  "friend  of  my  bosom"  was  the  new  associate, 
Lloyd,  who  seems  for  a  time  at  least  to  have  taken  Cole- 
ridge's place  as  Lamb's  special  confidant.  He,  too,  had 
had  his  grievances  against  the  "greater  Ajax,"  and  the 
two  humbler  combatants,  who  had  "  come  into  battle  un- 
der his  shield,"  found  consolation  at  this  time  in  one  an- 
other. Lloyd  was  moody  and  sensitive — even  then  a  prey 
to  the  melancholy  which  clung  to  him  through  life,  and  it 
was  well  for  Lamb  that  on  Coleridge  leaving  England  he 
had  some  more  genial  companionship  to  take  refuge  in. 
It  was  three  years  since  he  had  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Southey.  In  the  summer  of  1797  he  and  Lloyd  had  passed 
a  fortnight  under  his  roof  in  Hampshire.  And  now  that 
Coleridge  was  far  away,  it  was  Southey  who  naturally  took 
his  place  as  literary  adviser  and  confidant. 

We  gather  from  Lamb's  letters  to  Southey, in  1798-99, 
that  this  change  of  association  for  the  time  was  good  for 
him.  Coleridge  and  Lloyd  were  of  temperaments  too 
nearly  akin  to  Lamb's  to  be  wholly  serviceable  in  these 


U  CHARLES  LAMB.  Ichat. 

days,  when  the  calamities  in  his  family  still  overshadowed 
him.  The  friendship  of  Southey,  the  healthy-naturcd,  the 
industrious,  and  the  methodical,  was  a  wholesome  change 
of  atmosphere.  Southey  was  now  living  at  Westbury, 
near  Bristol.  Though  only  a  few  months  Lamb's  senior, 
he  had  been  three  years  a  married  man,  and  was  valiantly 
working  to  support  his  young  wife  by  that  craft  of  liter- 
ature which  he  followed  so  patiently  to  his  life's  end.  In 
this  year,  1798,  he  was  in  his  sweetest  and  most  humor- 
ous ballad  vein.  It  was  the  year  of  the  Well  of  St.  Keyne 
and  the  Battle  of  Blenheim,  and  other  of  those  shorter 
pieces  by  which  Southey  will  always  be  most  widely 
known.  He  had  not  failed  to  discover  Lamb's  value  as 
a  critic,  and  each  eclogue  or  ballad,  as  it  is  written,  is  sub- 
mitted to  his  judgment.  The  result  of  this  change  of  in- 
terest is  shown  in  a  marked  difference  of  tone  and  style  in 
Lamb's  letters.  He  is  less  sad  and  meditative,  and  begins 
to  exhibit  that  peculiar  playfulness  which  we  associate  with 
the  future  Elia.  One  day  he  writes, "  My  tailor  has  brought 
me  home  a  new  coat,  lapelled,  with  a  velvet  collar.  He 
assures  me  everybody  wears  velvet  collars  now.  Some  are 
born  fashionable,  some  achieve  fashion,  and  others,  like 
your  humble  servant,  have  fashion  thrust  upon  them." 
And  his  remarks  on  Southey 's  ode  To  a  Spider  (in  which 
he  justly  notes  the  metre  as  its  chief  merit,  and  wonders 
that  "  Bums  had  not  hit  upon  it ")  are  followed  by  a  dis- 
cursive pleasantry  having  the  true  Elia  ring,  "  I  love  this 
sort  of  poems  that  open  a  new  intercourse  with  the  most 
despised  of  the  animal  and  insect  race.  I  think  this  vein 
may  be  further  opened.  Peter  Pindar  hath  very  prettily 
apostrophized  a  fly ;  Burns  hath  his  mouse  and  his  louse ; 
Coleridge,  less  successfully,  hath  made  overtures  of  inti- 
macy to  a  jackass,  therein  only  following,  at  unresembling 


ra.]  FIRST  EXPERIMENTS  IN  LITERATURE.  45 

distance,  Sterne  and  greater  Cervantes.  Besides  these,  I 
know  of  no  other  examples  of  breaking  down  the  parti* 
tion  between  us  and  our  '  poor  earth-bom  companions.' " 
And  the  suggestion  that  follows,  that  Southey  should  un- 
dertake a  series  of  poems,  with  the  object  of  awakening 
sympathy  for  animals  too  generally  ill-treated  or  held  in 
disgust,  is  most  characteristic,  both  in  matter  and  man- 
ner. Indeed,  it  is  in  these  earlier  letters  to  Southey, 
rather  than  in  his  poetry  or  in  Rosamund  Gray,  that 
Charles  Lamb  was  feeling  the  way  to  his  true  place  in 
literature.  Already  we  observe  a  vein  of  reflectiveness 
and  a  curious  felicity  of  style  which  owe  nothing  to  any 
predecessor.  And  if  his  humour,  even  in  his  lightest 
moods,  has  a  tinge  of  sadness,  it  is  not  to  be  accounted 
for  only  by  the  suffering  he  had  passed  through.  It  be- 
longed, in  fact,  to  the  profound  humanity  of  its  author, 
to  the  circumstance  that  with  him,  as  with  all  true  hu- 
mourists, humour  was  but  one  side  of  an  acute  and  almost 
painful  sympathy. 

At  the  close  of  the  year  1799  Coleridge  returned  from 
Germany,  and  the  intercourse  between  the  two  friends  was 
at  once  resumed,  never  again  to  be  interrupted.  Early  in 
the  year  following  Charles  and  his  sister  removed  from 
the  Queen  Street  lodging,  where  they  had  continued  to  re- 
side since  his  mother's  death,  to  Chapel  Street,  Penton- 
ville.  It  appears  from  a  letter  of  Charles  to  Coleridge,  in 
the  spring  of  1800,  that  there  was  no  alleviation  of  his 
burden  of  constant  anxiety.  The  faithful  old  servant  of 
many  years  had  died,  after  a  few  days'  illness,  and  Lamb 
writes,  "Mary,  in  consequence  of  fatigue  and  anxiety,  is 
fallen  ill  again,  and  I  was  obliged  to  remove  her  yesterday. 
I  am  left  alone  in  a  house  with  nothing  but  Hetty's  dead 
body  to  keep  me  company.  To-morrow  I  bury  her,  and 
3* 


16  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

then  I  shall  be  quite  alone  with  nothing  but  a  cat  to  re- 
mind me  that  the  house  has  been  full  of  living  beings  like 
myself.  My  heart  is  quite  sunk,  and  I  don't  know  where 
to  look  for  relief.  Mary  will  get  better  again,  but  her 
constantly  being  liable  to  these  attacks  is  dreadful ;  nor  is 
it  the  least  of  our  evils  that  her  case  and  all  our  story  is 
so  well  known  around  us.  We  are  in  a  manner  marked. 
Excuse  my  troubling  you,  but  I  have  nobody  by  me  to 
speak  to  me.  I  slept  out  last  night,  not  being  able  to  en- 
dure the  change  and  the  stillness ;  but  I  did  not  sleep 
well,  and  I  must  come  back  to  my  own  bed.  I  am  going 
to  try  and  get  a  friend  to  come  and  be  with  me  to-mor- 
row. I  am  completely  shipwrecked.  My  head  is  quite 
bad.  I  almost  wish  that  Mary  were  dead.  God  bless 
you.     Love  to  Sarah  and  little  Hartley." 

It  is  the  solitary  instance  in  which  he  allows  us  to  see 
his  patience  and  hopefulness  for  a  moment  failing  him. 
That  terrible  sentence  "  we  are  in  a  manner  marked  "  has 
not  perhaps  received  its  due  weight,  in  the  estimate  of 
what  the  brother  and  sister  were  called  upon  to  bear.  It 
seems  certain  that  if  they  were  not  actually  driven  from 
lodging  to  lodging,  because  the  dreadful  rumour  of  mad- 
ness could  not  be  shaken  off,  they  were  at  least  shunned 
and  kept  at  a  distance  wherever  they  went.  The  rooms 
in  Pentonville  they  soon  received  notice  to  quit,  and  it  was 
then  that  Charles  turned,  perhaps  because  they  were  more 
quiet  and  secure  from  vulgar  overlooking,  to  the  old  fa- 
miliar and  dearly-loved  surroundings  of  his  childhood. 
"  I  am  going  to  change  my  lodgings,"  he  writes  later  in 
this  same  year  to  his  Cambridge  friend,  Manning,  in  a 
tone  of  cheerful  looking-forward  simply  marvellous,  con- 
sidering the  immediate  cause  of  the  removal.  "  I  am  go- 
ing to  change  my  lodgings,  having  received  a  hint  thai  it 


m.]  FIRST  EXPERIMENTS  IN  LITERATURE.  47 

would  be  agreeable,  at  our  Lady's  next  feast.  I  have 
partly  fixed  upon  most  delectable  rooms,  which  loot  out 
(when  you  stand  a  tiptoe)  over  the  Thames  and  Surrey 
Hills,  at  the  upper  end  of  King's  Bench  Walks  in  the 
Temple.  There  I  shall  have  all  the  privacy  of  a  house 
without  the  encumbrance,  and  shall  be  able  to  lock  my 
friends  out  as  often  as  I  desire  to  hold  free  converse  with 
my  immortal  mind — for  my  present  lodgings  resemble  a 
minister's  levee,  I  have  so  increased  my  acquaintance  (as 
they  call  'em)  since  I  have  resided  in  town.  Like  the 
country  mouse  that  had  tasted  a  little  of  urbane  manners, 
I  long  to  be  nibbling  my  own  cheese  by  my  dear  self, 
without  mouse-traps  and  time-traps.  By  my  new  plan  I 
shall  be  as  airy,  up  four  pair  of  stairs,  as  in  the  country, 
and  in  a  garden  in  the  midst  of  enchanting  (mDre  than 
Mahomedan  paradise)  London,  whose  dirtiest  drab-fre- 
quented alley,  and  her  lowest-bowing  tradesman,  I  would 
not  exchange  for  Skiddaw,  Helvellyn,  James,  Walter,  and 
the  parson  into  the  bargain.  0 !  her  lamps  of  a  night ! 
her  rich  goldsmiths,  print-shops,  toy-shops,  mercers,  hard- 
ware men,  pastry-cooks,  St.  Paul's  Church-yard,  the  Strand, 
Exeter  Change,  Charing  Cross,  with  the  man  upon  a  black 
horse !  These  are  thy  gods,  O  London !  Ain't  you 
mightily  moped  on  the  banks  of  the  Cam  ?  Had  you  not 
better  come  and  set  up  here?  You  can't  think  what  a 
difference.  All  the  streets  and  pavements  are  pure  gold, 
I  warrant  you.  At  least,  I  know  an  alchemy  that  turns 
her  mud  into  that  metal— a  mind  that  loves  to  be  at  home 
in  crowds." 

In  a  letter  to  Wordsworth,  of  somewhat  later  date, 
replying  to  an  invitation  to  visit  the  Lakes,  he  dwells  on 
the  same  passionate  love  for  the  great  city — the  "  place  of 
his  kindly  engendure"  —  not  alone  for  its  sights  and 


48  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap.  hi. 

sounds,  its  print-shops,  and  its  bookstalls,  but  for  the  hu- 
man faces,  without  which  the  finest  scenery  failed  to  sat- 
isfy his  sense  of  beauty.  "The  wonder  of  these  sights," 
he  says,  "  impels  me  into  night-walks  about  her  crowded 
streets,  and  I  often  shed  tears  in  the  motley  Strand  from 
fulness  of  joy  at  so  much  life.  All  these  emotions  must 
be  strange  to  you;  so  are  your  rural  emotions  to  me. 
But  consider  what  must  I  have  been  doing  all  ray  life  not 
to  have  lent  great  portions  of  my  heart  wiih  usury  to 
6uch  scenes  2" 

"What  must  I  have  been  doing  all  my  lifef  This 
might  well  be  the  language  of  tender  retrospect  indulged 
by  some  man  of  sixty.  It  is  that  of  a  young  man  of  six- 
and-twenty.  It  serves  to  show  us  how  much  of  life  had 
been  crowded  into  those  few  years. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

DRAMATIC    AUTHORSHIP   AND   DRAMATIC    CRITICISM. 

[1800-1809.] 

Lamb  was  now  established  in  his  beloved  Temple.  For 
nearly  nine  years  he  and  his  sister  resided  in  Mitre  Court 
Buildings,  and  for  about  the  same  period  afterwards  with- 
in the  same  sacred  precincts,  in  Inner  Temple  Lane.  Of 
adventure,  domestic  or  other,  his  biographer  has  hence- 
forth little  to  relate.  The  track  is  marked  on  the  one 
hand  by  his  changes  of  residence  and  occasional  brief  ex- 
cursions into  the  country,  on  the  other  by  the  books  he 
wrote  and  the  friendships  he  formed. 

He  had  written  to  his  friend  Manning,  as  we  have  seen, 
how  his  acquaintance  had  increased  of  late.  Of  such  ac- 
quaintances Manning  himself  is  the  most  interesting  to  us, 
as  having  drawn  from  Lamb  a  series  of  letters  by  far  the 
most  important  of  those  belonging  to  the  period  before 
us.  Manning  was  a  remarkable  person,  whose  acquaint- 
ance Lamb  had  made  on  one  of  his  visits  to  Cambridge 
during  the  residence  at  that  University  of  his  friend  Lloyd. 
He  was  mathematical  tutor  at  Caius,  and,  in  addition  to 
his  scientific  turn,  was  possessed  by  an  enthusiasm  which 
in  later  years  he  was  able  to  turn  to  very  practical  pur- 
pose, for  exploring  the  remoter  parts  of  China  and  Thibet. 
Lamb  had  formed  a  strong  admiration  for  Manning's  gen* 


50  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

ius.  He  told  Crabb  Robinson  in  after  years  that  he  was 
the  most  "wonderful  man"  he  had  ever  met.  Perhaps 
the  circumstance  of  Manning's  two  chief  interests  in  life 
being  so  remote  from  his  own,  drew  Lamb  to  him  by  a 
kind  of  "sympathy  of  difference."  Certainly  he  made 
very  happy  use  of  the  opportunity  for  friendly  banter  thus 
afforded,  and  the  very  absence  of  a  responsive  humour  in 
his  correspondent  seems  to  have  imparted  an  additional 
richness  to  his  own.  Meantime,  to  add  a  few  guineas  to 
his  scanty  income,  he  was  turning  this  gift  of  humour  to 
what  end  he  could.  For  at  least  three  years  (from  1800 
to  1803)  he  was  an  occasional  contributor  of  facetious 
paragraphs,  epigrams,  and  other  trifles  to  the  newspapers 
of  the  day.  "In  those  days," as  he  afterwards  told  the 
world  in  one  of  the  Elia  essays  {Newspapers  Thirty-five 
Years  Ago), "  every  morning  paper,  as  an  essential  retainer 
to  its  establishment,  kept  an  author,  who  was  bound  to 
furnish  daily  a  quantum  of  witty  paragraphs.  Sixpence 
a  joke — and  it  was  thought  pretty  high  too — was  Dan 
Stuart's  settled  remuneration  in  these  cases.  The  chat  of 
the  day,  scandal,  but  above  all,  dress,  furnished  the  mate- 
riaL  The  length  of  no  paragraph  was  to  exceed  seven 
lines.  Shorter  they  might  be,  but  they  must  be  poignant." 
Dan  Stuart  was  editor  of  the  Morning  Post,  and  Lamb 
contributed  to  this  paper,  and  also  to  the  Chronicle  and 
the  Albion.  Six  jokes  a  day  was  the  amount  he  tells  us 
he  had  to  provide  during  his  engagement  on  the  Post,  and 
in  the  essay  just  cited  he  dwells  with  much  humour  on 
the  misery  of  rising  two  hours  before  breakfast  (his  days 
being  otherwise  fully  employed  at  the  India  House)  to 
elaborate  his  jests.  "  No  Egyptian  task-master  ever  de- 
vised a  slavery  like  to  that,  our  slavery.  Half  a  dozen 
jests  in  a  day  (bating  Sundays  too),  why,  it  seems  nothing; 


ir.j  DRAMATIC  AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM.  61 

we  make  twice  the  number  every  day  in  our  lives  as  a 
matter  of  course,  and  claim  no  sabbatical  exemptions. 
But  then  they  come  into  our  head.  But  when  the  head 
has  to  go  out  to  them,  when  the  mountain  must  go  to 
Mahomet !"  A  few  samples  of  Lamb's  work  in  this  line 
have  been  preserved.  One  political  squib  has  survived, 
chiefly  perhaps  as  having  served  to  give  the  coup  de  grace 
to  a  moribund  journal,  called  the  Albion,  which  had  been 
only  a  few  weeks  before  purchased  ("  on  tick  doubtless," 
Lamb  says)  by  that  light-hearted  spendthrift,  John  Fen- 
wick,  immortalized  in  another  of  Lamb's  essays  {The  Two 
Races  of  Men)  as  the  typical  man  who  borrows.  The  jour- 
nal had  been  in  daily  expectation  of  being  prosecuted, 
when  a  (not  very  scathing)  epigram  of  Lamb's  on  the 
apostacy  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  alienated  the  last  of 
Fen  wick's  patrons,  Lord  Stanhope,  and  the  "  murky  closet," 
"  late  Rackstraw's  museum,"  in  Fleet  Street,  knew  the  edi- 
tor and  his  contributors  no  more.  Lamb  was  not  called 
upon  to  air  his  Jacobin  principles,  survivals  from  his  old 
association  with  Coleridge  and  Southey,  any  further  in  the 
newspaper  world.  "The  Albion  is  dead,"  he  writes  to 
Manning,  "  dead  as  nail  in  door — my  revenues  have  died 
with  it ;  but  I  am  not  as  a  man  without  hope."  He  had 
got  a  new  introduction,  through  his  old  friend  George 
Dyer,  to  the  Morning  Chronicle,  under  the  editorship  of 
Perry.  In  1802  we  find  him  again  working  for  the  Postj 
but  in  a  different  line.  Coleridge  was  contributing  to  that 
paper,  and  was  doing  his  best  to  obtain  for  Lamb  employ- 
ment on  it  of  a  more  dignified  character  than  providing 
the  daily  quantum  of  jokes.  He  had  proposed  to  furnish 
Lamb  with  prose  versions  of  German  poems  for  the  latter 
to  turn  into  metre.  Lamb  had  at  first  demurred,  on  the 
reasonable  ground  that  Coleridge,  whose  gift  of  verse  was 


62  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

certainly  equal  to  his  own,  might  as  easily  do  the  whole 
process  himself.  But  the  pressure  of  pecuniary  difficulty 
was  great,  and  a  fortnight  later  he  is  telling  Coleridge  that 
the  experiment  shall  at  least  be  tried,  "  As  to  the  trans- 
lations, let  me  do  two  or  three  hundred  lines,  and  then  do 
you  try  the  nostrums  upon  Stuart  in  any  way  you  please. 
K  they  go  down,  I  will  try  more.  In  fact,  if  I  got,  or 
could  but  get,  fifty  pounds  a  year  only,  in  addition  to  what 
I  have,  I  should  live  in  affluence."  By  dint  of  hard  work, 
much  against  the  grain,  he  contrived  during  the  year  that 
followed  to  make  double  the  hoped-for  sum ;  but  humour 
and  fancy  produced  to  order  could  not  but  fail  sooner  or 
later.  It  came  to  an  end  some  time  in  1803.  "  The  best 
and  the  worst  to  me,"  he  writes  to  Manning  in  this  year 
(Lamb  rarely  dates  a  letter),  "  is  that  I  have  given  up  two 
guineas  a  week  at  the  Post,  and  regained  my  health  and 
spirits,  which  were  upon  the  wane.  I  grew  sick,  and 
Stuart  unsatisfied.  Ludisti  satis,  tempus  abire  est.  I  must 
cut  closer,  that's  all." 

While  writing  for  the  newspapers,  he  had  not  allowed 
worthier  ambitions  to  cool.  He  was  still  thinking  of  suc- 
cess in  very  different  fields.  As  early  as  the  year  1'799  he 
had  submitted  to  Coleridge  and  Southey  a  five-act  drama 
in  blank  verse,  with  the  title  of  Pride's  Cure,  afterwards 
changed  to  John  Woodvil.  His  two  friends  had  urgently 
dissuaded  him  from  publishing,  and  though  he  followed 
this  advice,  he  had  not  abandoned  the  hope  of  seeing  it 
one  day  upon  the  stage,  and  at  Christmas  of  that  year 
had  sent  it  to  John  Kemble,  then  manager  of  Drury  Lane. 
Nearly  a  year  later,  having  heard  nothing  in  the  mean  time 
from  the  theatre  on  the  subject,  he  applied  to  Kemble  to 
know  his  fate.  The  answer  was  returned  that  the  manu- 
script was  lost,  and  Lamb  had  to  furnish  a  second  copy. 


ir.]  DRAMATIC  AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM.  68 

Later,  Kemble  went  so  far  as  to  grant  the  author  a  per- 
sonal interview,  but  the  final  result  was  that  the  play  was 
declined  as  unsuitable. 

That  Lamb  should  ever  have  dreamed  of  any  other  re- 
sult may  well  surprise  even  those  who  have  some  experi- 
ence of  the  attitude  of  a  young  author  to  his  first  drama. 
John  Woodvil  has  no  quality  that  could  have  made  its  suc- 
cess on  the  stage  possible.  It  shows  no  trace  of  construc- 
tive skill,  and  the  character-drawing  is  of  the  crudest.  By 
a  strange  perverseness  of  choice,  Lamb  laid  the  scene  of 
his  drama,  written  in  a  language  for  the  most  part  closely 
imitated  from  certain  Elizabethan  models,  in  the  period  of 
the  Restoration,  and  with  a  strange  carelessness  introduced 
side  by  side  with  the  imagery  and  rhythm  of  Fletcher  and 
Massinger  a  diction  often  ludicrously  incongruous.  Per- 
haps the  most  striking  feature  of  the  play,  regarded  as  a 
serious  effort,  is  the  entire  want  of  keeping  in  the  dialogue. 
Certain  passages  have  been  often  quoted,  such  as  that  on 
which  Lamb  evidently  prided  himself  most,  describing 
the  amusements  of  the  exiled  baronet  and  his  son  in  the 
forest  of  Sherwood : 

"  To  see  the  sun  to  bed,  and  to  arise 
Like  some  hot  amourist  with  glowing  eyes, 
Bursting  the  lazy  bands  of  sleep  that  bound  him 
With  all  his  fires  and  travelling  glories  round  him. 

*  *  *  «  * 

To  view  the  leaves,  thin  dancers  upon  air, 
Go  eddying  round,  and  small  birds,  how  they  fare, 
When  mother  autumn  fills  their  beaks  with  com 
Filched  from  the  careless  Amalthea's  born." 

They  serve  to  show  how  closely  Lamb's  fancy  and  his 
ear  were  attuned  to  the  music  of  Shakspeare  and  Shak- 


64  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

Bpeare's  contemporaries;  but  the  illusion  is  suddenly  bro- 
ken by  scraps  of  dialogue  sounding  the  depths  of  bathos : 

"  Servant. — Gentlemen,  the  fireworks  are  ready. 
First  Gent.— Wh&t  be  they? 

Lovell. — The  work  of  Loudon  artists,  which  our  host  has  provided 
in  honour  of  this  day." 

Or  by  such  an  image  as  that  with  which  the  play  con- 
cludes, of  the  penitent  John  Woodvil,  kneeling  on  the 
"hassock"  in  the  "  family  -  pew  "  of  St.  Mary  Ottery,  in 
the  "  sweet  shire  of  Devon." 

Lamb  was  not  deterred  by  his  failure  with  the  managers 
from  publishing  his  drama.  It  appeared  in  a  small  duo- 
decimo in  1802  ;  and  when,  sixteen  years  later,  he  included 
it  in  the  first  collected  edition  of  his  writings,  dedicated  to 
Coleridge,  he  was  still  able  to  look  with  a  parent's  tender- 
ness upon  this  child  of  his  early  fancy.  "  When  I  wrote 
John  Woodvil"  he  says,  "Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and 
Massinger,  were  then  a  Jirst  love,  and  from  what  I  was  so 
freshly  conversant  in,  what  wonder  if  my  language  imper- 
ceptibly took  a  tinge  ?"  This  expresses,  in  fact,  the  real 
significance  of  the  achievement.  Though  it  is  impossible 
seriously  to  weigh  the  merits  of  John  Woodvil  as  a  drama, 
it  is  yet  of  interest  as  the  result  of  the  studies  of  a  young 
man  of  fine  taste  and  independent  judgment  in  a  field  of 
English  literature  which  had  lain  long  unexplored.  With- 
in a  few  years  Charles  Lamb  was  to  contribute,  by  more 
effective  methods,  to  the  revived  study  of  the  Elizabethan 
drama,  but  in  the  mean  time  he  was  doing  something,  even 
in  John  Woodvil,  to  overthrow  the  despotic  conventional- 
ities of  eighteenth-century  "  poetic  diction,"  and  to  reac- 
costom  the  ear  to  the  very  different  harmonies  of  an  older 
tune. 


IV.]  DRAMATIC  AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM.  66 

John  Woodvil  was  noticed  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  for 
April,  1803.  Lamb  might  have  been  at  that  early  date  too 
insignificant,  personally,  to  be  worth  the  powder  and  shot 
of  Jeffrey  and  his  friends,  but  he  was  already  known  as 
the  associate  of  Coleridge  and  Southey,  and  it  was  this 
circumstance — as  the  concluding  words  of  the  review  rath- 
er unguardedly  admit — that  marked  his  little  volume  for 
the  slaughter.  He  had  been  already  held  up  to  ridicule 
in  the  pages  of  the  Anti-Jacobin,  as  sharing  the  revolu- 
tionary sympathies  of  Coleridge  and  Southey.  It  is  cer- 
tainly curious  that  Lamb,  who  never  "  meddled  with  poli- 
tics," home  or  foreign,  any  more  than  the  Anti- Jacobin's 
knife-grinder  himself,  should  have  his  name  embalmed  in 
that  periodical  as  a  leading  champion  of  French  Socialism ; 

"  Coleridge  and  Southey,  Lloyd  and  Lamb  and  Co., 
Tune  all  your  mystic  harps  to  praise  Lepeaux," 

There  was  abundant  opportunity  in  Lamb's  play  for  the 
use  of  that  scourge  which  the  Edinburgh  Review  may  be 
said  to  have  first  invented  as  a  critical  instrument.  Plot 
and  characters,  and  large  portions  of  the  dialogue,  lent 
themselves  excellently  to  the  purposes  of  critical  banter, 
and  it  was  easy  to  show  that  Lamb  had  few  qualifications 
for  the  task  he  had  undertaken.  As  he  himself  observed 
in  his  essay  on  Hogarth :  "  It  is  a  secret  well  known  to 
the  professors  of  the  art  and  mystery  of  criticism,  to  insist 
upon  what  they  do  not  find  in  a  man's  works,  and  to  pass 
over  in  silence  what  they  do."  It  was  open  to  the  re- 
viewer to  note,  as  even  Lamb's  friend  Southey  noted,  the 
"  exquisite  silliness  of  the  story,"  but  it  did  not  enter  into 
his  plan  to  detect,  as  Southey  had  done,  the  "  exquisite 
beauty "  of  much  of  the  poetry.     The  reason  why  it  is 

worth  while  to  dwell  for  a  moment  on  this  forgotten  re- 
E 


66  CHABLES  LAMB.  [ohap. 

view  (not,  by  the  way,  by  Jeffrey,  althoagb  Lamb's  friends 
seem  generally  to  have  attributed  it  to  the  editor's  own 
hand)  is  that  it  shows  how  much  Lamb  was  in  advance  of 
his  reviewer  in  familiarity  with  our  older  literature.  The 
review  is  a  piece  of  pleasantry,  of  which  it  would  be  ab- 
surd to  complain,  but  it  is  the  pleasantry  of  an  ignorant 
man.  The  writer  afiEects  to  regard  the  play  as  a  specimen 
of  the  primeval  drama.  "  We  have  still  among  us,"  he 
says, "  men  of  the  age  of  Thespis,"  and  declares  that "  the 
tragedy  of  Mr.  Lamb  may  indeed  be  fairly  considered  as 
supplying  the  first  of  those  lost  links  which  connect  the 
improvements  of  -dEschylus  with  the  commencement  of 
the  art."  Talfourd  expresses  wonder  that  a  young  critic 
should  "  seize  on  a  little  eighteen-penny  book,  simply  print- 
ed, without  any  preface :  make  elaborate  merriment  of  its 
outline,  and,  giving  no  hint  of  its  containing  one  profound 
thought  or  happy  expression,  leave  the  reader  of  the  re- 
view at  a  loss  to  suggest  a  motive  for  noticing  such  vapid 
absurdities."  But  there  is  really  little  cause  for  such  won- 
der. The  one  feature  of  importance  in  the  little  drama  is 
that  it  here  and  there  imitates  with  much  skill  the  ima- 
gery and  the  rhythm  of  a  family  of  dramatists  whom  the 
world  had  been  content  entirely  to  forget  for  nearly  two 
centuries.  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Lamb's  re- 
viewer had  any  acquaintance  with  these  dramatists.  The 
interest  of  the  review  consists  in  the  evidence  it  affords 
of  a  general  ignorance,  even  among  educated  men,  which 
Lamb  was  to  do  more  than  any  man  of  his  time  to  dispel. 
The  passage  about  the  sports  in  the  forest,  which  set  Wil- 
liam Godwin  (who  met  with  it  somewhere  as  an  extract) 
searching  through  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  to  find,  proba- 
bly conveyed  no  idea  whatever,  to  the  Edinburgh  Review- 
er, save  that  which  he  honestly  confessed,  that  here  was 


IV.]  DRAMATIC  AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM.  57 

a  specimen  of  versification  which  had  been  long  ago  im- 
proved from  oflE  the  face  of  the  earth. 

In  the  summer  of  1802  Charles  and  his  sister  spent  their 
holiday,  three  weeks,  with  Coleridge  at  Keswick.  The  let- 
ters to  Coleridge  and  Manning  referring  to  this  visit  show 
pleasantly  that  there  was  something  of  affectation  in  the 
disparaging  tone  with  which  Charles  was  wont  to  speak 
of  the  charms  of  scenery.  Though  on  occasion  he  would 
make  his  friends  smile  by  telling  that  when  he  ascended 
Skiddaw  he  was  obliged,  in  self-defence,  to  revert  in  mem- 
ory to  the  ham-and-beef  shop  in  St.  Martin's  Lane,  it  is 
evident  from  his  enthusiastic  words  to  Manning  that  the 
Lake  scenery  had  moved  and  delighted  him.  *'  Coleridge 
dwells,"  he  writes  to  Manning,  "  upon  a  small  hill  by  the 
side  of  Keswick,  in  a  comfortable  house,  quite  enveloped 
on  all  sides  by  a  net  of  mountains :  great  floundering  bears 
and  monsters  they  seemed,  all  couchant  and  asleep.  We 
got  in  in  the  evening,  travelling  in  a  post-chaise  from  Pen- 
rith, in  the  midst  of  a  gorgeous  sunset  which  transmuted 
all  the  mountains  into  colours,  purple,  &c.,  &c.  We  thought 
we  had  got  into  Fairyland.  But  that  went  off  (as  it  never 
came  again,  while  we  stayed  we  had  no  more  fine  sunsets) ; 
and  we  entered  Coleridge's  comfortable  study  just  in  the 
dusk,  when  the  mountains  were  all  dark  with  clouds  upon 
their  heads.  Such  an  impression  I  never  received  from  ob- 
jects of  sight  before,  nor  do  I  suppose  that  I  can  ever 
again.  Glorious  creatures,  fine  old  fellows,  Skiddaw,  &c., 
I  never  shall  forget  ye,  how  ye  lay  about  that  night,  like 
an  entrenchment ;  gone  to  bed,  as  it  seemed  for  the  night, 
but  promising  that  ye  were  to  be  seen  in  the  morning." 
And  later,  "  We  have  clambered  up  to  the  top  of  Skid- 
daw, and  I  have  waded  up  the  bed  of  Lodore.  In  fine,  I 
have  satisfied  myself  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  that 
18 


88  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

which  tourists  call  romantic,  which  I  very  much  suspected 
before."  And  again,  of  Skiddaw,  "  Oh,  its  fine  black  head, 
and  the  bleak  air  atop  of  it,  with  a  prospect  of  mountains 
all  about  and  about,  making  you  giddy ;  and  then  Scotland 
afar  off,  and  the  border  countries  so  famous  in  song  and 
ballad !  It  was  a  day  that  will  stand  out  like  a  mountain, 
I  am  sure,  in  my  life." 

It  is  pleasant  to  read  of  these  intervals  of  bracing  air, 
both  to  body  and  mind,  in  the  story  of  the  brother  and 
sister,  for  the  picture  of  the  home  life  in  the  Temple  lodg- 
ing at  this  time,  drawn  by  the  same  frank  hand,  is  any- 
thing but  cheerful.  This  very  letter  to  Manning  (who  was 
apparently  spending  his  holiday  in  Switzerland)  goes  on  to 
hint  of  grave  anxieties  and  responsibilities  belonging  to  the 
life  in  London.  *'  My  habits  are  changing,  I  think,  i.  «., 
from  drunk  to  sober.  Whether  I  shall  be  happier  or  not 
remains  to  be  proved.  I  shall  certainly  be  more  happy  in 
a  morning;  but  whether  I  shall  not  sacrifice  the  fat,  and 
the  marrow,  and  the  kidneys — i.  e.,  the  night,  glorious  care- 
drowning  night,  that  heals  all  our  wrongs,  pours  wine  into 
our  mortifications,  changes  the  scene  from  indifferent  and 
flat  to  bright  and  brilliant  ?  O  Manning,  if  I  should  have 
formed  a  diabolical  resolution  by  the  time  you  come  to 
England,  of  not  admitting  any  spirituous  liquors  into  my 
house,  will  you  be  my  guest  on  such  shameworthy  terms  ? 
Is  life,  with  such  limitations,  worth  trying  ?  The  truth  is 
that  my  liquors  bring  a  nest  of  friendly  harpies  about  my 
house,  who  consume  me.  This  is  a  pitiful  tale  to  be  read 
at  St.  Gothard,  but  it  is  just  now  nearest  my  heart." 

The  tale  is  indeed  a  sad  one,  and  we  have  no  reason  to 
suppose  it  less  true  than  pitiful.  There  is  no  concealment 
on  the  part  of  Lamb  himself,  or  his  sister,  or  of  those  who 
knew  him  most  intimately,  of  the  fact  that  from  an  early 


IV.]  DRAMATIC  AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM.  59 

age  Charles  found  in  wine,  or  its  equivalents,  a  stimulus 
that  relieved  him  under  the  pressure  of  shyness,  anxiety, 
and  low  spirits,  and  that  the  habit  remained  with  him  till 
the  end  of  his  life.  It  is  not  easy  to  deal  with  this  "  frail- 
ty" (to  borrow  Talfourd's  expression)  in  Lamb,  without 
falling  into  an  apologetic  tone,  suggestive  of  the  much- 
abused  proverb  connecting  excuse  with  accusation.  But 
it  is  the  biographer's  task  to  account  for  these  things,  if 
not  to  excuse  them,  and  at  this  period  there  is  not  want- 
ing evidence  of  hard  trials  attending  the  life  of  the  brother 
and  sister  which  may  well  prompt  a  treatment  of  the  sub- 
ject the  reverse  of  harsh.  There  is  a  correspondence  ex- 
tant of  Mary  Lamb  with  Miss  Stoddart,  who  afterwards 
became  the  wife  of  William  Hazlitt,  which  throws  much 
sad  light  on  the  history  of  the  joint  home  during  these 
years.  The  pressure  of  poverty  was  being  keenly  felt. 
"I  hope,  when  I  write  next,"  she  says,  early  in  1804,  "I 
shall  be  able  to  tell  you  Charles  has  begun  something  which 
will  produce  a  little  money :  for  it  is  not  well  to  be  very 
poor,  which  we  certainly  are  at  this  present  writing." 
Charles'  engagement  as  contributor  of  squibs  and  occa- 
sional paragraphs  to  the  Morning  Post  had  come  to  an 
end  just  before  this  letter  of  Mary's.  But  poverty  was  not 
the  worst  of  the  home  troubles.  It  is  too  clear  that  both 
brother  and  sister  suffered  from  constant  and  harassing  de- 
pression, and  that  their  heroic  determination  to  live  en- 
tirely for  each  other  only  made  matters  worse.  "  It  has 
been  sad  and  heavy  times  with  us  lately,"  Mary  writes  in 
the  year  following  (1805).  "When  I  am  pretty  well,  his 
low  spirits  throw  me  back  again ;  and  when  he  begins  to 
get  a  little  cheerful,  then  I  do  the  same  kind  office  for 
him ;"  and  again,  "  Do  not  say  anything  when  you  write, 
of  our  low  spirits — it  will  vex  Charles.    You  would  laugh, 


60  CHARLES  LAMB.  Icoat. 

or  you  would  cry,  perhaps  both,  to  see  us  sit  together, 
looking  at  each  other  with  long  and  rueful  faces,  and  say- 
ing 'How  do  you  do?'  and  'How  do  you  do?'  and  then 
we  fall  a  crying,  and  say  we  will  be  better  on  the  morrow. 
He  says  we  are  like  toothache  and  his  friend  gum-boil, 
which  though  a  kind  of  ease,  is  but  an  uneasy  kind  of 
ease,  a  comfort  of  rather  an  uncomfortable  sort."  In  the 
following  year  we  gather  that  Charles,  still  bent  on  success 
in  the  drama  as  the  most  likely  means  of  adding  to  his  in- 
come, had  begun  to  write  a  farce,  and  finding  the  gloom 
here  described  intolerable,  in  such  an  association,  had  taken 
a  cheap  lodging  hard  by  to  which  he  might  retire,  and  pur- 
sue his  work  without  distraction.  But  the  more  utter  sol- 
itude proved  as  intolerable  as  the  depressing  influences  of 
home.  "  The  lodging,"  writes  Mary  Lamb,  "  is  given  up, 
and  here  he  is  again — Charles,  I  mean — as  unsettled  and 
as  undetermined  as  ever.  When  he  wont  to  the  poor  lodg- 
ing, after  the  holidays  I  told  you  he  had  taken,  he  could 
not  endure  the  solitariness  of  them,  and  I  had  no  rest  for 
the  sole  of  my  foot  till  I  promised  to  believe  his  solemn 
protestations  that  he  could  and  would  write  as  well  at 
home  as  there." 

There  is  a  remark  in  this  same  letter,  hardly  more  touch- 
ing than  it  is  indicative  of  the  clear-sighted  wisdom  of  this 
true-hearted  woman.  "  Our  love  for  each  other,"  she  writes, 
"  has  been  the  torment  of  our  lives  hitherto.  I  am  most 
seriously  intending  to  bend  the  whole  force  of  my  mind 
to  counteract  this,  and  I  think  I  see  some  prospect  of  suc- 
cess." It  doubtless  was  this  strong  affection,  working  by 
ill-considered  means,  that  made  much  of  the  unhappiness 
of  Charles  Lamb's  life.  His  sense  of  what  he  owed  to  his 
sister,  who  had  been  mother  and  sister  in  one,  his  admira- 
tion for  her  character,  and  his  profound  pity  for  her  af- 


IV.]  DRAMATIC  AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM.  61 

fliction,  made  him  resolve  that  no  other  tie,  no  other  taste 
or  pleasure,  should  interfere  with  the  prime  duty  of  cleav- 
ing to  her  as  long  as  life  should  last.  But  this  exclusive 
devotion  was  not  a  good  thing  for  either.  They  wanted 
some  strong  human  interests  from  outside  to  assist  them 
to  bear  those  of  home.  They  were  both  fond  of  society. 
In  their  later  more  prosperous  days  they  saw  much  society 
of  a  brilliant  and  notable  sort,  but  already  Charles  had 
made  the  discovery  that  "open  house"  involved  tempta- 
tion of  a  kind  he  had  not  learnt  to  resist.  The  little  sup- 
pers, at  home  and  with  friends  elsewhere,  meant  too  much 
punch  and  too  much  tobacco,  and  the  inevitable  sequel  of 
depression  and  moroseness  on  the  morrow.  "He  came 
home  very  smoky  and  drinky  last  night,"  is  the  frequent 
burden  of  Miss  Lamb's  letters.  And  so  it  came  to  pass 
that  his  social  life  was  spent  too  much  between  these  two 
extremes — the  companionship  of  that  one  sister,  anxiety 
for  whose  health  was  always  pressing,  and  whose  inherited 
instincts  were  too  like  his  own,  and  the  convivialities  which 
banished  melancholy  for  a  while  and  set  his  fancy  and  his 
speech  at  liberty,  but  too  often  did  not  bear  the  morning's 
reflection.  He  needed  at  this  time  fewer  companions,  but 
more  friends.  Coleridge,  Southey,  Wordsworth,  Manning, 
were  all  out  of  London,  and  only  in  his  scanty  holidays, 
or  on  occasion  of  their  rare  visits  to  town,  could  he  take 
counsel  with  them. 

One  pleasant  gleam  of  sunshine  among  the  driving 
clouds  of  those  years  of  anxiety  is  afforded  in  the  lines 
on  Hester  Savary.  During  the  few  months  that  Lamb 
and  his  sister  lodged  at  Pentonville  in  1800,  he  had  fallen 
in  love  (for  the  second  and  last  time)  with  a  young  Quak- 
eress. In  sending  the  verses  to  Manning  (in  Paris)  in 
1803,  Lamb  recalls  the  old  attachment  as  one  his  friend 
4 


62  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

would  remember  having  heard  him  mention.  However 
ardent  it  may  have  been,  it  was  presumably  without  hope 
of  requital,  for  Lamb  admits  that  he  had  never  spoken  to 
the  lady  in  his  life.  He  may  have  met  her  daily  in  his 
walks  to  and  from  the  office,  or  have  watched  her  week  by 
week  on  her  way  to  that  Quakers'  meeting  he  has  so  lov- 
ingly described  elsewhere.  And  now,  only  a  month  be- 
fore, she  had  died,  and  Lamb's  true  vein,  unspoiled  by 
squibs  and  paragraphs  written  to  order  for  party  journals, 
flows  once  more  in  its  native  purity  and  sweetness: 

"  When  maidens  such  as  Hester  die 
Their  place  ye  may  not  well  supply, 
Though  ye  among  a  thousand  try 

With  vain  endeavour. 
A  month  or  more  hath  she  been  dead. 
Yet  cannot  I  by  force  be  led 
To  think  upon  the  wormy  bed 
And  her  together. 

"  A  springy  motion  in  her  gait, 
A  rising  step,  did  indicate 
Of  pride  and  joy  no  common  rate 

That  flushed  her  spirit. 
I  know  not  by  what  name  beside 
I  shall  it  call :  if  'twas  not  pride, 
It  was  a  joy  to  that  allied 

She  did  inherit. 

"  Her  parents  held  the  Quaker  rule 
Which  doth  the  human  spirit  cool : 
But  she  was  trained  in  Nature's  school^ 

Nature  had  blest  her. 
A  waking  eye,  a  prying  mind, 
A  heart  that  stirs,  is  hard  to  bind : 
A  hawk's  keen  sight  ye  cannot  blind— 

Ye  could  not  Hester. 


IT.]  DRAMATIC  AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM.  68 

"  My  sprightly  neighbour,  gone  before 
To  that  unknown  and  silent  shore, 
Shall  we  not  meet,  as  heretofore, 

Some  summer  morning — 
When  from  thy  cheerful  eyes  a  ray 
Hath  struck  a  bliss  upon  the  day, 
A  bliss  that  would  not  go  away, 

A  sweet  fore-warning?" 


These  charming  verses  are  themselves  a  "sweet  fore- 
warning "  of  happier  times  to  come.  New  friends  were  at 
nand,  and  new  interests  in  literature  were  soon  to  bring 
a  little  cheerful  relief  to  the  monotony  of  the  Temple 
lodging.  We  have  already  heard  something  of  a  play  in 
preparation.  The  first  intimation  of  Lamb's  resolve  to 
tempt  dramatic  fortune  once  again  is  in  a  letter  to  Words- 
worth, in  September,  1805.  "I  have  done  nothing,"  he 
writes,  "  since  the  beginning  of  last  year,  when  I  lost  my 
newspaper  job,  and  having  had  a  long  idleness,  I  must  do 
something,  or  we  shall  get  very  poor.  Sometimes  I  think 
of  a  farce,  but  hitherto  all  schemes  have  gone  off ;  an  idle 
brag  or  two  of  an  evening,  vapouring  out  of  a  pipe,  and 
going  off  in  the  morning;  but  now  I  have  bid  farewell 
to  my  *  sweet  enemy '  tobacco,  as  you  will  see  in  the  next 
page,  I  shall  perhaps  set  nobly  to  work.  Hang  work !" 
He  did  set  to  work,  in  good  heart,  during  the  six  months 
that  followed.  Mary  Lamb's  letters  contain  frequent  ref- 
erences to  the  farce  in  progress,  and  before  Midsummer, 
1806,  it  was  completed,  and  accepted  by  the  proprietors 
of  Drury  Lane.     The  farce  was  the  celebrated  Mr.  H. 

No  episode  of  Lamb's  history  is  better  known  than  the 
production,  and  the  summary  failure,  of  this  jeu  cTesprit. 
That  it  failed  is  no  matter  for  surprise,  and  most  certainly 
none  for  regret.    Though  it  had  the  advantage,  in  its  lead* 


64  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

ing  character,  of  the  talent  of  Elliston,  the  best  light-come- 
dian of  his  day,  the  slightness  of  the  interest  (dealing  with 
the  inconveniences  befalling  a  gentleman  who  is  ashamed 
to  confess  that  his  real  name  is  Hogsflesh)  was  too  patent 
for  the  best  acting  to  contend  against.  Crabb  Robinson, 
one  of  Lamb's  more  recent  friends,  accompanied  the  broth- 
er and  sister  to  the  first  and  only  performance,  and  received 
the  impression  that  the  audience  resented  the  vulgarity  of 
the  name,  when  it  was  at  last  revealed,  rather  than  the 
flimsiness  of  the  plot.  But  the  latter  is  quite  suflScient  to 
account  for  what  happened.  The  curtain  fell  amid  a  storm 
of  hisses,  in  which  Lamb  is  said  to  have  taken  a  conspicu- 
ous share.  Indeed,  his  genuine  critical  faculty  must  have 
come  to  his  deliverance  when  he  thus  viewed  his  own  work 
from  the  position  of  an  outsider.  He  expresses  no  sur- 
prise at  the  result,  after  the  first  few  utterances  of  natural 
disappointment.  The  mortification  must  have  been  con- 
siderable. The  brother  and  sister  had  looked  forward  to  a 
success.  They  sorely  needed  the  money  it  might  have 
brought  them,  and  Charles'  deep-seated  love  of  all  things 
dramatic  made  success  in  that  field  a  much  cherished  hope. 
But  he  bore  his  failure,  as  he  bore  all  his  disappointments 
in  life,  with  a  cheerful  sweetness.  He  writes  to  Hazlitt : 
"  Mary  is  a  little  cut  at  the  ill-success  of  Mr.  H.^  which 
came  out  last  night  and  failed.  I  know  you'll  be  sorry, 
but  never  mind.  We  are  determined  not  to  be  cast  down. 
I  am  going  to  leave  off  tobacco,  and  then  we  must  thrive. 
A  smoky  man  must  write  smoky  farces."  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  Mr.  H.  is  not  much  better  in  reading  than  it 
was  found  in  the  acting.  Its  humour,  consisting  largely  of 
puns  and  other  verbal  pleasantries,  exhibits  little  or  noth- 
ing of  Lamb's  native  vein,  and  the  dialogue  is  too  often  la« 
boriously  imitated  from  the  conventional  comedy-dialogue 


tv.]  DRAMATIC  AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM.  66 

then  in  vogue.  But  even  had  this  been  different,  the  lack 
of  constructive  ability  already  shown  in  John  Woodvil 
must  have  made  success  as  a  writer  for  the  st^e  quite 
beyond  his  reach. 

He  was  on  safer  ground,  though  not  perhaps  working  so 
thoroughly  ccm  amore,  in  another  literary  enterprise  of  this 
time.  In  1805  he  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  William 
Hazlitt,  and  Hazlitt  had  introduced  him  to  William  God- 
win. Godwin  had  started,  as  his  latest  venture,  a  series 
of  books  for  children,  to  which  he  himself  contributed  un- 
der the  name  of  Edward  Baldwin.  Lamb,  writing  to  his 
friend  Manning,  in  May,  1806,  thus  describes  a  joint  task 
in  which  he  and  his  sister  were  engaged  in  connexion  with 
this  scheme :  *'  She  is  doing  for  Godwin's  bookseller  twen- 
ty of  Shakspeare's  plays,  to  be  made  into  children's  tales. 
Six  are  already  done  by  her,  to  wit.  The  Tempest,  Winter's 
Tale,  Midsummer  Night,  Much  Ado,  Two  Gentlemen  of 
Verona,  and  Cymheline  ;  and  the  Merchant  of  Venice  is  in 
forwardness.  I  have  done  Othello  and  Macbeth,  and  mean 
to  do  all  the  tragedies.  I  think  it  will  be  popular  among 
the  little  people,  besides  money.  It's  to  bring  in  sixty 
guineas.  Mary  has  done  them  capitally,  I  think  you'd 
think."  Mary  herself  supplements  this  account  in  a  way 
that  makes  curiously  vivid  to  us  the  homely  realities  of 
their  joint  life.  She  writes  about  the  same  time :  "  Charles 
has  written  Macbeth,  Othello,  King  Lear,  and  has  begun 
Hamlet.  You  would  like  to  see  us,  as  we  often  sit  writ- 
ing on  one  table  (but  not  on  one  cushion  sitting),  like  Her- 
mia  and  Helena,  in  the  Midsummer  Niglifs  Dream;  or 
rather  like  an  old  literary  Darby  and  Joan,  I  taking  snuff, 
and  he  groaning  all  the  while,  and  saying  he  can  make 
nothing  of  it,  which  he  always  says  till  he  has  finished,  and 
then  he  finds  out  he  has  made  something  of  it."    Writing 


66  CHARLES  LAMB.  Icrat. 

these  Tales  from  Shakspeare  was  no  doubt  task-work  to 
the  brother  and  sister,  bnt  it  was  task-work  on  a  congenial 
theme,  and  one  for  which  they  had  special  qualifications. 
They  had,  to  start  with,  a  profound  and  intimate  acquaint- 
ance with  their  original,  which  set  them  at  an  infinite  dis- 
tance from  the  usual  compilers  of  such  books  for  children. 
They  had,  moreover,  command  of  a  style,  Wordsworthian 
in  its  simplicity  and  purity,  that  enabled  them  to  write 
down  to  the  level  of  a  child's  understanding,  without  any 
appearance  of  condescension.  The  very  homeliness  of  the 
style  may  easily  divert  attention  from  the  rare  critical  fac- 
ulty, the  fine  analysis  of  character,  that  marks  the  writers' 
treatment  of  the  several  plays.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the 
publisher  in  announcing  a  subsequent  edition  was  able  to 
boast  that  a  book  designed  for  young  children  had  been 
found  suitable  for  those  of  more  advanced  age.  There  is, 
indeed,  no  better  introduction  to  the  study  of  Shakspeare 
than  these  Tales — no  better  initiation  into  the  mind  of 
Shakespeare,  and  into  the  subtleties  of  his  language  and 
rhythm.  For  the  ear  of  both  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb  had 
been  trained  on  the  cadences  of  Elizabethan  English,  and 
they  were  able  throughout  to  weave  the  very  words  of 
Shakspeare  into  their  narrative  without  producing  any 
effect  of  discrepancy  between  the  old  and  the  new. 

The  Tales  were  published  in  1807,  and  were  a  success, 
a  second  edition  appearing  in  the  following  year.  One 
result  of  this  success  was  a  commission  from  Godwin  to 
make  another  version  of  a  great  classic  for  the  benefit  of 
children,  the  story  of  the  Odyssey.  Lamb  was  no  Greek 
scholar,  but  he  had  been,  like  Keats,  stirred  by  the  rough 
vigor  of  Chapman's  translation.  "  Chapman  is  divine,"  he 
said  afterwards  to  Bernard  Barton, "  and  my  abridgment 
has  not  quite  emptied  him  of  bis  divinity."    And  the  few 


IT,]  DRAMATIC  AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM.  67  ^ 

words  of  preface  with  which  he  modestly  introduced  his 
little  book  as  a  supplement  to  that  well-known  school 
classic  the  Adventures  of  Telemachus,  shows  that  the  moral 
value  of  this  record  of  human  vicissitude  had  moved  him 
not  less  than  the  variety  of  the  adventure.  "  The  picture 
which  he  exhibits,"  he  writes,  "  is  that  of  a  brave  man 
struggling  with  adversity;  by  a  wise  use  of  events  and 
with  an  inimitable  presence  of  mind  under  diflSculties, 
forcing  out  a  way  for  himself  through  the  severest  trials 
to  which  human  life  can  be  exposed;  with  enemies  natu- 
ral and  supernatural  surrounding  him  on  all  sides.  The 
agents  in  this  tale,  besides  men  and  women,  are  giants, 
enchanters,  sirens ;  things  which  denote  external  force  or 
internal  temptations,  the  twofold  danger  which  a  wise  for- 
titude must  expect  to  encounter  in  its  course  through 
this  world."  We  cannot  be  wrong  in  judging  that  Charles 
Lamb  had  seen  in  this  "  wisdom  of  the  ancients"  an  image 
of  sirens  and  enchanters,  of  trials  and  disciplines,  that  be- 
set the  lonely  dweller  at  home  not  less  surely  than  the 
wanderer  from  city  to  city,  and  had  found  therein  some- 
thing of  a  cordial  and  a  tonic  for  himself.  No  one  felt 
more  repugnance  than  did  Lamb  to  the  appending  of  a 
formal  moral  to  a  work  of  art,  to  use  his  own  comparison, 
like  the  "  God  send  the  good  ship  safe  into  harbour "  at 
the  end  of  a  bUl  of  lading.  But  it  was  to  be  his  special 
note  as  a  critic  that  he  could  not  keep  his  human  compas- 
sion from  blending  with  his  judgment  of  every  work  of 
human  imagination.  If  his  strength  as  a  critic  was — and 
remains  for  us — as  the  "  strength  of  ten,"  it  was  because 
his  heart  was  pure. 

To  what  masterly  purpose  he  had  been  long  training 
this  faculty  of  criticism  he  was  now  about  to  show.  The 
letter  to  Manning,  which  tells  of  his  Adventures  of  UlysseSf 


68  CHARLES  LAMB.  [oeai>. 

announces  a  more  important  undertaking — apparently  a 
commission  from  the  firm  of  Longman  —  Specimens  of 
English  Dramatic  Poets  contemporary  with  Shakspeare. 
"  Specimens,"  he  writes,  **  are  becoming  fashionable.  We 
have  Specimens  of  Ancient  English  Poets,  Specimens  of 
Modem  English  Poets,  Specimens  of  Ancient  English  Prose 
Writers,  without  end.  They  used  to  be  called  *  Beauties.* 
You  have  seen  Beauties  of  Shakspeare?  so  have  many 
people  that  never  saw  any  beauties  in  Shakspeare."  But 
Lamb's  method  was  to  have  little  in  common  with  that  of 
the  unfortunate  Dr.  Dodd.  "  It  is  to  have  notes,"  is  the 
brief  mention  of  that  feature  of  the  collection  which  was 
at  once  to  place  their  author  in  the  first  rank  of  critics. 
The  commentary,  often  extending  to  no  more  than  a  dozen 
or  twenty  lines  appended  to  each  scene,  or  each  author 
chosen  for  illustration,  was  of  a  kind  new  to  a  generation 
accustomed  to  the  Variorum  school  of  annotator.  It  con- 
tains no  philology,  jio  antiquarianism,  no  discussion  of 
diflScult  or  corrupt  passages.  It  takes  its  character  from 
the  principle  set  forth  in  the  Preface  on  which  the  selec- 
tion of  scenes  is  made : 

"  The  kind  of  extracts  which  I  have  sought  after  have  been,  not  so 
much  passages  of  wit  and  humour — though  the  old  plays  are  rich  in 
such — as  scenes  of  passion,  sometimes  of  the  deepest  quality,  inter- 
esting situations,  serious  descriptions,  that  which  is  more  nearly  al- 
lied to  poetry  than  to  wit,  and  to  tragic  rather  than  comic  poetry. 
The  plays  which  I  have  made  choice  of  have  been  with  few  ex- 
ceptions those  which  treat  of  human  life  and  manners,  rather  than 
masques  and  Arcadian  pastorals,  with  their  train  of  abstractions, 
unimpassioned  deities,  passionate  mortals,  Glaius,  and  Medorus,  and 
Amintas,  and  Amaryllis.  My  leading  design  has  been  to  illustrate 
what  may  be  called  the  moral  sense  of  our  ancestors.  To  show  in 
what  manner  they  felt  when  they  placed  themselves  by  the  power 
of  imagination  in  trying  situations,  in  the  conflicts  of  duty  and  pas- 
sion, or  the  strife  of  contending  duties ;  what  sort  of  loves  and  enrni* 


IT.]  DRAMATIC  AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM.  69 

ties  theirs  were ;  how  their  griefs  were  tempered,  and  their  full- 
swoln  joys  abated;  how  much  of  Shakspeare  shines  in  the  great 
men  his  contemporaries,  and  how  far  in  his  divine  mind  and  man- 
ners  he  surpassed  them  and  all  mankind." 

The  very  idea  of  the  collection  was  a  bold  one.  When 
we  cast  our  eye  over  the  list  of  now  familiar  names,  Mar- 
lowe and  Peele,  Marston,  Chapman,  Ford,  and  Webster, 
from  whom  Lamb  chose  his  scenes,  we  must  not  forget 
that  he  was  pleading  their  merits  before  a  public  which 
knew  them  only  as  names,  if  it  knew  them  at  all.  With 
the  one  exception  of  Shakspeare,  the  dramatists  of  the 
period,  between  "  the  middle  of  Elizabeth's  reign  and  the 
close  of  the  reign  of  Charles  I.,"  were  unknown  to  the 
general  reader  of  the  year  1808.  Shakspeare,  indeed,  had 
a  permanent  stage-existence — that  best  of  commentaries 
which  fine  acting  supplies,  to  which  Lamb  himself  had 
been  from  childhood  so  largely  indebted.  But  for  those 
who  studied  him  in  the  closet  there  was  no  aid  to  his  in- 
terpretation save  such  as  was  supplied  by  the  very  unillu- 
minating  notes  of  Johnson  or  Malone.  And  this  circum- 
stance must  be  taken  into  account  if  we  would  rightly 
estimate  the  genius  of  Lamb.  As  a  critic  he  had  no  mas- 
ter— it  might  almost  be  said,  no  predecessor.  He  was  the 
inventor  of  his  own  art.  As  the  friend  of  Coleridge,  he 
might  have  heard  something  of  that  school  of  dramatic 
criticism  of  which  Lessing  was  the  founder,  but  there  is 
little  trace  of  any  such  influence  in  Lamb's  own  critical 
method.  And  though,  three  years  later,  Coleridge  was  to 
make  another  contribution  of  value  to  the  same  cause,  in 
the  Lectures  on  Shakspeare  delivered  at  the  London  Philo- 
sophical Society,  it  is  likely  that  his  obligations  were  at 
least  as  great  to  Lamb,  as  those  of  Lamb  had  ever  been,  in 
the  same  field,  to  Coleridge. 
4* 


70  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chaf. 

The  suggestion  in  the  preface,  already  cited,  of  Shak* 
speare  as  the  representative  dramatist,  the  standard  by 
which  his  contemporaries  must  be  content  to  be  judged, 
is  amply  followed  up  in  the  notes,  and  gives  a  unity  of  its 
own  to  a  collection  so  miscellaneous.  I  may  refer,  as  ex- 
amples, to  the  masterly  distinction  drawn  between  the  use 
made  of  the  supernatural  by  Middleton  in  the  Witch,  and 
by  Shakspeare  in  Macbeth,  and  again  to  the  contrast  in- 
dicated between  the  dirge  in  Webster's  White  Devil  and 
the  "  ditty  which  reminds  Ferdinand  of  his  drowned  fa- 
ther in  the  Tempest " — "  as  that  is  of  the  water,  watery ; 
80  is  this  of  the  earth,  earthy.  Both  have  that  intenseness 
of  feeling  which  seems  to  resolve  itself  into  the  elements 
which  it  contemplates  " — a  criticism  which  could  only  have 
been  conceived  by  one  who  was  himself  a  poet.  How 
admirably,  again,  does  he  draw  attention  (in  a  note  on  the 
Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton)  to  that  feature  of  Shakspeare's 
genius  which  perhaps  more  than  any  other  is  forced  upon 
the  reader's  mind  as  he  turns  from  passage  to  passage  in 
this  collection:  "This  scene  has  much  of  Shakspeare's 
manner  in  the  sweetness  and  good-naturedness  of  it.  It 
seems  written  to  make  the  reader  happy.  Few  of  our 
dramatists  or  novelists  have  attended  enough  to  this. 
They  torture  and  wound  us  abundantly.  They  are  econ- 
omists only  in  delight."  Nothing,  again,  can  be  more 
profound  than  his  remark  on  the  elaborate  and  ostenta- 
tious saintliness  of  Ordella  (in  Fletcher's  Thierry  and 
Theodoret).  "Shakspeare  had  nothing  of  this  contortion 
in  his  mind,  none  of  that  craving  after  romantic  incidents, 
and  flights  of  strained  and  improbable  virtue,  which  I 
think  always  betray  an  imperfect  moral  sensibility."  And 
yet  though  Lamb's  fine  j-udgment  approved  the  fidelity  to 
nature,  and  the  artistic  self-control,  which  he  here  empha- 


IV.]  DRAMATIC  AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM.  71 

sises  in  his  great  model,  it  is  clear  that  the  audacious  con- 
ceptious,  both  of  character  and  situation,  in  which  writers 
such  as  Ford  and  Tourneur  indulged,  had  no  small  fasci- 
nation for  him.  As  he  recalled  the  dreary  types  of  virtue, 
the  "  insipid  levelling  morality  to  which  the  modern  stage 
is  tied  down,"  he  turned  with  joy — as  from  a  heated  sa- 
loon into  the  fresh  air — to  the  "vigorous  passions,"  the 
"virtues  clad  in  flesh  and  blood,"  with  which  the  old 
dramatists  presented  him.  And  this  joy  in  the  present- 
ment of  the  naked  human  soul  is  felt  throughout  all  his 
criticisms  on  the  more  terrible  scenes  of  Shakspeare's  suc- 
cessors. His  "ears  tingle,"  or  his  eyes  fill,  or  his  heart 
leaps  within  him,  as  Calantha  dies  of  her  broken  heart, 
or  Webster's  Duchess  yields  slowly  to  the  torture.  Hence 
it  is  that  Lamb's  criticism  as  often  takes  the  form  of  a 
study  of  human  life  as  of  the  dramatist's  art.  And  hence 
also  the  efEect  he  often  leaves  of  having  indulged  in  praise 
too  great  for  the  occasion.  There  is,  moreover,  another 
reason  for  this  last-named  result,  which  was  inseparable 
from  Lamb's  method.  No  two  dramatists  can  be  meas- 
ured by  comparing  passage  with  passage,  scene  with  scene. 
Shakspeare  and  Marlowe  cannot  be  compared  or  contrasted 
by  setting  the  death  of  Edward  H.  side  by  side  with  that 
of  Richard  IL  Drama  must  be  put  side  by  side  with 
drama.  Lamb  does  not  indeed  suggest,  by  anything  that 
he  says,  that  the  rank  of  a  dramatist  can  be  decided  by 
passages  or  extracts.  Only  it  did  not  enter  into  his  scheme 
to  dwell  upon  that  supreme  art  of  construction,  and  that 
highest  gift  of  characterization,  which  are  needed  to 
make  the  perfect  dramatist.  In  "  profoundness  of  single 
thoughts,"  in  "richness  of  imagery,"  in  "abundance  of 
illustration,"  he  could  produce  passage  after  passage  from 
Shakspeare's  contemporaries  that  evinced  genius  nearly  al* 


12  CHARLES  LAMB.  fOHAP.  ir. 

lied  to  Shakspeare's ;  but  of  that "  fundamental  excellence" 
which  "distinguishes  the  artist  from  the  mere  amateur, 
that  power  of  execution  which  creates,  forms,  and  consti- 
tutes," it  was  not  possible  for  him  to  supply  example. 
And  this  reservation  the  student  must  be  prepared  to 
make,  who  would  approach  the  study  of  the  Elizabethan 
Drama  by  the  aid  of  Charles  Lamb's  specimens. 

But,  whatever  qualification  must  be  interposed,  it  is 
certain  that  the  publication  of  these  extracts,  and  the  ac- 
companying commentary,  has  a  well-defined  place  in  the 
poetical  renascence  that  marked  the  early  years  of  this 
century.  The  revived  study  of  the  old  English  drama- 
tists— other  than  Shakspeare  —  dates  from  this  publica- 
tion. Coleridge  had  not  yet  begun  to  lecture,  nor  Hazlitt 
to  write,  and  it  was  not  till  some  twenty  years  later  that 
Mr.  Dyce  began  his  different,  but  not  less  important,  la- 
bours in  the  same  field.  To  Lamb  must  be  allowed  the 
credit  of  having  first  recalled  attention  to  a  range  of  poet- 
ical excellence,  in  forgetfulness  of  which  English  poetry 
had  too  long  pined  and  starved.  It  was  to  these  moun- 
tain-heights of  inspiration — not  to  the  cultivated  lowlands 
of  the  eighteenth  century — that  Poetry  was  to  turn  her 
eyes  for  help. 


CHAPTER  V. 

IWNBR   TEMPLE   LANE. — PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS. 

[1809-1817.] 

Talfourd  made  the  acquaintance  of  Charles  Lamb  early 
in  the  year  1815,  and  has  recorded  the  impression  left 
by  his  appearance  and  manner  at  that  time  in  words 
which  at  this  stage  of  our  memoir  it  may  be  convenient 
to  quote.  Lamb  has  been  fortunate  in  his  verbal  de- 
scribers,  if  not  in  the  attempts  of  the  painter's  art  to  con- 
vey a  true  idea  of  his  outward  man.  Leigh  Hunt  has  de- 
clared that  "there  never  was  a  true  portrait  of  Lamb" — 
and  those  who  take  the  trouble  to  examine  in  succession 
the  half-dozen  portraits  that  are  in  existence  are  obliged 
to  admit  that  it  is  diflScult  to  derive  from  them  any  con- 
sistent idea  of  his  features  and  expression.  But  it  so  hap- 
pens that  we  have  full-length  portraits  of  him  drawn  by 
other  hands,  which  more  than  compensate  for  this  want. 
Poets,  critics,  and  humourists,  of  kindred  genius,  have  left 
on  record  how  Charles  Lamb  appeared  to  them ;  and 
though  the  various  accounts  bear,  as  might  be  expected, 
the  strong  impress  of  their  writers'  individuality,  and 
though  each  naturally  gives  most  prominence  to  the  traits 
that  struck  him  most,  the  final  impression  left  is  one  of 
agreement,  in  remarkable  degree.     We  have  descriptions 

of  Lamb,  all  possessing  points  of  great  interest^by  Tal- 
19 


H  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

fonrd,  Procter,  Hood,  Patmore,  and  others,  and  from  these 
it  is  possible  to  learn  how  their  subject  looked  and  spoke 
and  bore  himself,  with  a  precision  and  vividness  that  we 
are  seldom  in  such  cases  allowed  to  enjoy.  I  have  the  ad- 
vantage of  being  able  to  confirm  their  accounts  by  the 
testimony  of  a  living  witness.  Mr.  James  Crossley,  of 
Manchester,  has  related  to  me  his  recollections  of  more 
than  one  interview  which  he  had  with  Lamb,  nearly  sixty 
years  ago,  and  has  kindly  allowed  me  to  make  use  of 
them. 

Talfourd's  reminiscence,  committed  to  writing  shortly 
after  Lamb's  death,  if  slightly  idealized  by  his  own  poetic 
temperament,  is  not  for  that  reason  a  less  satisfactory 
basis  on  which  to  form  a  conception  of  Charles  Lamb^s 
appearance.  "Methinks  I  see  him  before  me  now,  as  he 
appeared  then,  and  as  he  continued  with  scarcely  any  per- 
ceptible alteration  to  me,  during  the  twenty  years  of  inti- 
macy which  followed,  and  were  closed  by  his  death.  A 
light  frame,  so  fragile  that  it  seemed  as  if  a  breath  would 
overthrow  it,  clad  in  clerk-like  black,  was  surmounted  by 
a  head  of  form  and  expression  the  most  noble  and  sweet. 
His  black  hair  curled  crisply  about  an  expanded  forehead; 
bis  eyes,  softly  brown,  twinkled  with  varying  expression, 
though  the  prevalent  feeling  was  sad ;  and  the  nose  slight- 
ly curved,  and  delicately  carved  at  the  nostril,  with  the 
lower  outline  of  the  face  regularly  oval,  completed  a  head 
which  was  finely  placed  on  the  shoulders,  and  gave  im- 
portance and  even  dignity  to  a  diminutive  and  shadowy 
stem.  Who  shall  describe  his  countenance,  catch  its  quiv- 
ering sweetness,  and  fix  it  for  ever  in  words?  There  are 
none,  alas,  to  answer  the  vain  desire  of  friendship.  Deep 
thought,  striving  with  humour;  the  lines  of  suffering 
wreathed  into  cordial  mirth ;  and  a  smile  of  painful  sweet* 


T.]  INNER  TEMPLE  LANE.  1i 

ness,  present  an  image  to  tlie  mind  it  can  as  little  describe 
as  lose.  His  personal  appearance  and  manner  are  not  un- 
fitly characterized  by  what  he  himself  says  in  one  of  his 
letters  to  Manning,  of  Braham,  *  a  compound  of  the  Jew, 
the  gentleman,  and  the  angel.' " 

From  this  tender  and  charming  sketch  it  is  instructive 
to  turn  to  the  rude  etching  on  copper  made  by  Mr.  Brook 
Pulham  from  life,  in  the  year  1825,  which  in  the  opinion 
of  Lamb's  biographers  (and  Mr.  Crossley  confirms  their 
judgment)  gives  a  better  idea  than  all  other  existing  por- 
traits of  Charles  Lamb's  outward  man.  The  small  stature 
— he  was  very  noticeably  below  the  middle  height — the 
head  apparently  out  of  proportion  to  the  slender  frame, 
the  Jewish  cast  of  nose,  the  long  black  hair,  the  figure 
dwindling  away  down  to  "almost  immaterial  legs,"  the 
tight-fitting  clerk-like  suit  of  black,  terminating  in  gaiters 
and  straps,  all  these  appear  in  Mr.  Pulham's  etching  in 
such  bold  realism  that  the  portrait  might  easily  pass  for 
a  caricature,  were  it  not  confirmed  in  all  its  details  by 
other  authorities.  Mr.  Crossley  recalls  with  perfect  dis- 
tinctness the  aspect  of  Lamb  as  he  sat  at  his  desk  in  his 
room  at  the  India  House,  looking  the  more  diminutive  for 
being  perched  upon  a  very  high  stool.  His  hair  and  com- 
plexion were  so  dark,  that  when  looked  at  in  combination 
with  the  complete  suit  of  solemn  black,  they  suggested 
old  Fuller's  description  of  the  negro,  of  which  Lamb  was 
so  fond — an  image  "cut  in  ebony."  He  might  have 
passed,  Hood  tells  us,  for  a  "Quaker  in  black."  "He 
had  a  long  melancholy  face,"  says  Mr.  Procter,  "with 
keen  penetrating  eyes."  "  There  was  altogether,"  Mr. 
Patmore  says,  "a  Rabbinical  look  about  Lamb's  head 
which  was  at  once  striking  and  impressive."  But  the 
feature  of  his  expression  that  all  his  friends  dwell  on  with 


76  OHABLES  LAMB.  f chip. 

most  loving  emphasis  is  "  the  bland  sweet  smile,  with  the 
touch  of  sadness  in  it ;"  and  Mr.  Patmore's  description  of 
the  general  impression  produced  by  this  countenance  well 
sums  up  and  confirms  the  testimony  of  all  other  friends: 
"  In  point  of  intellectual  character  and  expression,  a  finer 
face  was  never  seen,  nor  one  more  fully,  however  vaguely 
corresponding  with  the  mind  whose  features  it  interpreted. 
There  was  the  gravity  usually  engendered  by  a  life  passed 
in  book  learning,  without  the  slightest  tinge  of  that  as- 
sumption and  affectation  which  almost  always  attend  the 
gravity  so  engendered ;  the  intensity  and  elevation  of  gen- 
eral expression  that  mark  high  genius,  without  any  of  its 
pretension  and  its  oddity ;  the  sadness  waiting  on  fruitless 
thoughts  and  baffled  aspirations,  but  no  evidence  of  that 
spirit  of  scorning  and  contempt  which  these  are  apt  to 
engender.  Above  all  there  was  a  pervading  sweetness  and 
gentleness  which  went  straight  to  the  heart  of  every  one 
who  looked  on  it ;  and  not  the  less  so,  perhaps,  that  it 
bore  about  it  an  air,  a  something,  seeming  to  tell  that  it 
was — not  put  on — for  nothing  would  be  more  unjust  than 
to  tax  Lamb  with  assuming  anything,  even  a  virtue,  which 
he  did  not  possess — but  preserved  and  persevered  in,  spite 
of  opposing  and  contradictory  feelings  within  that  strug- 
gled in  vain  for  mastery.  It  was  a  thing  to  remind  you 
of  that  painful  smile  which  bodily  disease  and  agony  will 
sometimes  put  on,  to  conceal  their  sufferings  from  the  ob- 
servation of  those  they  love." 

We  know  Charles  Lamb's  history,  and  have  not  to  ask 
for  any  explanation  of  the  appearances  thus  described.  He 
had  always  (it  must  not  be  forgotten)  to  contend  against 
sad  memories,  and  anticipations  of  further  sorrow.  He 
was  by  nature  "  terribly  shy,"  and  his  difficulties  of  speech, 
and  possibly  a  consciousness  of  oddity  of  manner  and  ap* 


T.]  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  11 

pearance,  aggravated  this  diflBdence.  It  was  "  terrible  '*  to 
him — as  he  confessed  to  Mr.  Procter  one  morning  when 
they  were  going  together  to  breakfast  with  Rogers — to 
undergo  the  scrutiny  of  servants.  Hence  only  at  times, 
and  in  certain  companies,  was  he  entirely  at  his  ease ;  and 
it  is  evident  that,  when  in  the  society  of  those  in  sympa- 
thy with  him  and  his  tastes,  he  conveyed  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent impression  of  himself  from  that  left  under  the  op- 
posite circumstances.  Before  strangers,  or  uncongenial 
acquaintance,  he  was  uncomfortable,  and  if  not  actually 
silent,  generally  indulged  in  some  line  of  conversation  or 
vein  of  sentiment  foreign  to  his  own  real  nature.  Like 
most  men,  Charles  Lamb  had  various  oddnesses,  contradic- 
tions, perversenesses  of  temper,  and  unless  he  was  in  com- 
pany of  those  who  loved  him  (and  who  he  knew  loved 
him),  and  understood  him,  he  was  very  prone,  in  a  spirit 
of  what  children  call  "  contrariness,"  to  set  to  work  to 
alienate  them  still  more  from  any  possibility  of  sjonpathy 
with  him.  Something  of  this  must  of  course  be  laid  to 
the  account  of  the  extra  glass  of  wine  or  spirits  that  so 
often  determined  his  mood  for  the  evening,  only  that 
when  Procter,  or  Talfourd,  or  Coleridge,  or  Hazlitt  were 
round  his  hospitable  table,  this  stimulus  served  but  to  set 
free  the  richer  and  more  generous  springs  of  thought  and 
fancy  within  him.  I  have  the  authority  of  Mr.  Crossley 
for  saying  that  on  one  evening  when  in  manner,  speech, 
and  walk  Lamb  was  obviously  under  the  influence  of  what 
he  had  drunk,  he  discoursed  at  length  upon  Milton,  with 
a  fulness  of  knowledge,  an  eloquence,  and  a  profundity 
of  critical  power,  which  left  an  impression  upon  Mr.  Cross- 
ley  never  to  be  effaced.  But  we  know  that  the  wine  was 
not  in  this  case  the  good,  any  more  than  on  other  occa- 
sions it  was  the  evil,  influence.    "  It  created  nothing,"  says 


W  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

Mr.  Patmore,  "  but  it  was  the  talisman  that  not  only  un« 
locked  the  poor  casket  in  which  the  rich  thoughts  of 
Charles  Lamb  were  shut  up,  but  set  in  motion  that  ma- 
chinery in  the  absence  of  which  they  would  have  lain  like 
gems  in  the  mountain  or  gold  in  the  mine."  But  where 
the  society  was  unsympathetic,  the  wine  often  set  free  less 
lovable  springs  of  fancy  in  Charles  Lamb.  He  would  take 
up  a  perverse  attitude  of  contradiction,  with  too  slight  re- 
gard for  the  courtesies  of  human  intercourse,  or  else  give 
play  to  a  mere  spirit  of  reckless  and  not  very  edifying  mock- 
ery. The  same  enthusiastic  friend  and  admirer  just  quoted 
is  obliged  to  admit  that "  to  those  who  did  not  know  him, 
or  knowing,  did  not  and  could  not  appreciate  him.  Lamb 
often  passed  for  something  between  an  imbecile,  a  brute, 
and  a  buffoon ;  and  the  first  impression  he  made  on  ordi- 
nary people  was  always  unfavourable,  sometimes  to  a  vio- 
lent and  repulsive  degree."  Many  persons  have  of  late 
been  startled  by  the  discovery  that  Lamb  sometimes  left 
the  same  impression  upon  people  the  reverse  of  ordinary. 
Nothing  perhaps  in  the  Reminiscences  of  Thomas  Carlyle 
has  provoked  so  much  surprise,  and  hurt  so  many  feelings, 
as  his  passing  criticism  upon  Lamb.  And  yet  it  is  entirely 
supported  and  explained  by  Mr.  Patmore's  observation.  No 
two  persons  could  have  been  more  antipathetic  than  Lamb 
and  Carlyle,  and  nothing  therefore  is  less  surprising  than 
that  to  the  author  of  the  Latter-Day  Pamphlets  Charles 
and  his  sister  should  have  appeared  two  very  "  sorry  phe- 
nomena," or  that  the  scraps  of  Lamb's  talk  which  he  over- 
heard during  a  passing  call  should  often  have  seemed 
"  contemptibly  small,"  "  ghastly  make-believe  of  wit,"  and 
the  rest.  There  is  no  need  to  question  the  substantial  jus- 
tice of  this  report.  It  is  only  too  probable  that  the  pres- 
ence of  the  austere  and  dyspeptic  Scotchman  (one  of  that 


y.]  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  19 

nation  Lamb  had  all  his  days  been  trying  in  vain  to  like) 
made  him  more  than  usually  disposed  to  produce  his  en- 
tire stock  of  frivolity.  He  had  a  perverse  delight  in  shock- 
ing uncongenial  society.  Another  noticeable  person — very 
different  in  all  respects  from  Carlyle — has  left  a  record, 
significant  by  its  very  brevity,  of  his  single  interview  with 
Lamb.  Macready  tells  in  his  diary  how  he  was  asked  to 
meet  him  at  Talfourd's,  and  this  is  what  he  records  of  the 
interview :  "  I  noted  one  odd  saying  of  Lamb's,  that  *  the 
last  breath  he  drew  in  he  wished  might  be  through  a  pipe, 
and  exhaled  in  a  pun.' "  Lamb  may  have  discovered  at  a 
glance  that  he  and  the  great  tragedian  were  not  likely  to 
take  the  same  views  of  men  and  things.  Perhaps  his  love 
both  for  joking  and  smoking  had  struck  Macready  the  re- 
verse of  favourably,  and  if  so,  it  was  quite  in  Lamb's  way 
to  clench  once  for  all  the  unfavourable  impression  by  such 
an  "  odd  saying  "  as  that  just  quoted. 

Charles  Lamb  has  drawn  for  us  a  character  of  himself, 
but,  so  fond  was  he  of  hoaxes  and  mystifications  of  this 
kind,  that  we  might  have  hesitated  to  accept  it  as  faithful, 
were  it  not  in  such  precise  accord  with  the  testimony  of 
others  already  cited.  The  second  series  of  the  Essays  of 
JElia  was  introduced  by  a  preface,  purporting  to  be  writ- 
ten "by  a  friend  of  the  late  Elia,"  but  of  course  from 
Charles'  own  hand.  In  this  preface  he  assumes  Elia  to 
have  actually  died,  and  after  some  preliminary  remarks  on 
his  writings  thus  proceeds  to  describe  his  character  and 
manners : 

"My  late  friend  was  in  many  respects  a  singular  character. 
Those  who  did  not  like  him,  hated  him ;  and  some,  who  once  liked 
him,  afterwards  became  his  bitterest  haters.  The  truth  is,  he  gave 
himself  too  little  concern  what  he  uttered,  and  in  whose  presence. 
He  observed  neither  time  nor  place,  and  would  e'en  out  with  what 


80  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

came  uppermost.  With  the  severe  religionist  he  would  pass  for  a 
free-thinker ;  while  the  other  faction  set  him  down  for  a  bigot,  or 
persuaded  themselves  that  he  belied  his  sentiments.  Few  under- 
stood him,  and  I  am  not  certain  that  at  all  times  he  quite  understood 
himself.  He  too  much  affected  that  dangerous  figure — irony.  He 
sowed  doubtful  speeches,  and  reaped  plain  unequivocal  hatred.  He 
would  interrupt  the  gravest  discussion  with  some  light  jest ;  and  yet, 
perhaps,  not  quite  irrelevant  in  ears  that  could  understand  it.  Your 
long  and  much  talkers  hated  him.  The  informal  habit  of  his  mind, 
joined  to  an  inveterate  impediment  of  speech,  forbade  him  to  be  an 
orator ;  and  he  seemed  determined  that  no  one  else  should  play  that 
part  when  he  was  present.  He  was  petit  and  ordinary  in  his  person 
and  appearance.  I  have  seen  him  sometimes  in  what  is  called  good 
company,  but  where  he  has  been  a  stranger,  sit  silent  and  be  sus- 
pected for  an  odd  fellow ;  till  some  unlucky  occasion  provoking  it, 
he  would  stutter  out  some  senseless  pun  (not  altogether  senseless, 
perhaps,  if  rightly  taken)  which  has  stamped  his  character  for  the 
evening.  It  was  hit  or  miss  with  him ;  but  nine  times  out  of  ten  he 
contrived  by  this  device  to  send  away  a  whole  company  his  enemies. 
His  conceptions  rose  kindlier  than  his  utterance,  and  his  happiest 
impromptus  had  the  appearance  of  effort.  He  has  been  accused  of 
trying  to  be  witty,  when  in  truth  he  was  but  struggling  to  give  his 
poor  thoughts  articulation.  He  chose  his  companions  for  some  in- 
dividuality of  character  which  they  manifested.  Hence  not  many 
persons  of  science,  and  few  professed  literati,  were  of  his  councils. 
They  were,  for  the  most  part,  persons  of  an  uncertain  fortune ;  and 
as  to  such  people  commonly  nothing  is  more  obnoxious  than  a  gen- 
tleman of  settled  (though  moderate)  income,  he  passed  with  most  of 
them  for  a  great  miser.  To  my  knowledge  this  was  a  mistake.  His 
intimados,  to  confess  a  truth,  were  in  the  world's  eye  a  ragged  regi- 
ment. He  found  them  floating  on  the  surface  of  society ;  and  the 
colour,  or  something  else,  in  the  weed  pleased  him.  The  burrs  stuck 
to  him ;  but  they  were  good  and  loving  burrs  for  all  that.  He  never 
greatly  cared  for  the  society  of  what  are  called  good  people.  If  any 
of  these  were  scandalized  (and  offences  were  sure  to  arise)  he  could 
not  help  it.  When  he  has  been  remonstrated  with  for  not  making 
more  concessions  to  the  feehngs  of  good  people,  he  would  retort  by 
asking  what  one  point  did  these  good  people  ever  concede  to  him? 
He  was  temperate  in  bis  meals  and  diversions,  but  always  kept  a 


T.]  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  81 

little  on  this  side  of  abstemiousness.  Only  in  the  use  of  the  Indian 
weed  he  might  be  thought  a  little  excessive.  He  took  it,  he  would 
say,  as  a  solvent  of  speech.  Marry — as  the  friendly  vapour  ascend- 
ed, how  his  prattle  would  curl  up  sometimes  with  it !  the  ligaments 
which  tongue-tied  him  were  loosened,  and  the  stammerer  proceeded  a 
statist !" 

When  a  man's  account  of  himself — Ms  foibles  and  ec- 
centricities— is  confirmed  in  minutest  detail  by  those  who 
knew  and  loved  him  best,  it  is  reasonable  to  conclude  that 
we  are  not  far  wrong  in  accepting  it,  and  this  self-por- 
traiture of  Lamb's  gives  an  unexpected  plausibility  to  the 
judgments,  which  otherwise  have  a  harsh  sound,  of  Mr. 
Patmore  and  Carlyle.  The  peculiarities  which  Lamb  here 
enumerates  are  just  those  which  are  little  likely  ever  to 
receive  gentle  consideration  from  the  world. 

Lamb's  mention  of  the  "  senseless  pun "  which  often 
"  stamped  his  character  for  the  evening,"  suggests  oppor- 
tunely the  subject  of  his  reputation  as  a  humourist  and 
wit.  This  habit  of  playing  upon  words  was  a  part  of 
him  through  life,  and,  as  in  the  case  of  most  who  indulge 
in  it,  became  an  outlet  for  whatever  mood  was  for  the 
moment  dominant  in  Charles  Lamb's  mind.  When  he 
was  ill  at  ease,  and  in  an  attitude  (as  he  often  was)  of  an- 
tagonism to  his  company,  it  would  take  the  shape  of  a 
wanton  interruption  of  the  argument  under  discussion. 
To  use  a  simile  of  Mr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  it  was  the 
halfpenny  laid  upon  the  line  by  a  mischievous  boy  to 
upset  a  whole  train  of  cars.  When  he  was  annoyed,  he 
made  annoying  puns;  when  he  was  frivolous,  he  made 
frivolous  puns ;  but  when  he  was  in  the  cue,  and  his  sur- 
roundings were  such  as  to  call  forth  his  better  powers,  he 
put  into  this  form  of  wit  humour  and  imagination  of  a 
high  order.     Samples  of  all  these  kinds  have  been  pre- 


82  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

served,  and  are  not  without  use  as  showing  the  various 
moods  of  his  many-sided  nature,  but  it  is  pitiable  to  read 
long  strings  of  them,  set  down  without  any  discrimination, 
and  to  be  asked  to  accept  them  as  specimens  of  Lamb's 
"  wit  and  humour."  Many  of  his  jests  thus  handed  down 
are  little  more  than  amusing  evidence  of  a  restless  levity, 
and  almost  petulant  impatience  of  the  restraints  of  serious 
discourse.  Much  of  his  conversational  humour  took  the 
form  of  retort — courteous,  or  the  reverse.  Sometimes  these 
embodied  a  criticism  so  luminous  or  acute  that  they  have 
survived,  not  only  for  their  drollery,  or  even  their  severity. 
"  Charles,  did  you  ever  hear  me  preach  ?"  asked  Coleridge, 
referring  to  the  days  of  his  Unitarian  ministry.  "  I  never 
heard  you  do  anything  else,"  was  the  reply.  When  Words- 
worth was  discussing  with  him  the  degree  of  originality 
to  be  allowed  to  Shakspeare,  as  borrowing  his  plots  from 
sources  ready  to  his  hand,  and  was  even  hinting  that  other 
poets,  with  the  History  of  Hamblet  before  them,  might 
have  been  equally  successful  in  adapting  it  to  the  stage, 
Charles  cried  out,  "  Oh !  here's  Wordsworth  says  he  could 
have  written  Hamlet,  if  he^d  had  the  mind"  In  both 
these  cases  the  retort  embodies  a  felicitous  judgment.  A 
foible — if  in  either  case  it  is  to  be  called  a  foible — in  the 
character  of  the  two  poets,  respectively,  flashes  out  into 
sudden  light.  The  pun  is  more  than  a  pun;  the  wit  is 
more  than  wit;  it  is  a  sudden  glory  of  truth  kindled  by 
the  imagination.  Lamb's  wide  reading  and  memory  give 
a  peculiar  flavour  to  much  of  his  wit.  He  had  a  way  of 
applying  quotations  which  is  all  his  own.  When  Crabb 
Robinson,  then  a  new-fledged  barrister,  told  him  of  his 
sensations  on  getting  his  first  brief  in  the  King's  Bench, 
"  I  suppose,"  said  Charles,  "  you  said  to  it,  *  Thou  great 
First  Cause,  least  understood.' "    Somebody  remarking  on 


T.]  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  88 

Shakspeare's  anachronisms — clocks  and  watches  in  Julius 
Ccesar,  oracles  of  Delphi  in  the  Winter's  Tale — he  said  he 
supposed  that  was  what  Dr.  Johnson  meant  when  he  wrote 
of  him  that  "  panting  Time  toiled  after  him  in  vain." 
Hood  records  a  visit  paid  by  him  to  the  Lambs  when  they 
were  living  at  Islington,  with  a  wasp's  nest  near  their  front 
door.  "  He  was  one  day  bantering  my  wife  on  her  dread 
of  wasps,  when  all  at  once  he  uttered  a  terrible  shout — a 
wounded  specimen  of  the  species  had  slily  crawled  up  the 
leg  of  the  table,  and  stung  him  in  the  thumb.  I  told  him 
it  was  a  refutation  well  put  in,  like  Smollett's  timely  snow- 
ball. *  Yes,'  said  he, '  and  a  stinging  commentary  on  Mac- 
beth— 

" ' "  By  the  pricking  of  my  thambs, 

Somethiag  wicked  this  way  comes." ' " 

Readers  of  the  Essays  of  Elia  will  recall  many  happy 
effects  produced  by  this  novel  use  of  familiar  quotations. 
Not  that  he  ever  condescended  to  degrade  a  really  fine 
passage  by  any  vulgar  associations.  No  great  harm  was 
done  (in  the  "  Essay  on  Roast  Pig ")  by  calling  in  his 
friend's  "  Epitaph  on  an  Infant "  to  justify  the  sacrifice 
of  the  innocent  suckling,  before  it  should  "  grow  up  to  the 
grossness  and  indocility  which  too  often  accompany  ma- 
turer  swinehood — 

"  '  Ere  Bin  could  blight  or  sorrow  fade 
Death  came  with  timely  care.' " 

And,  now  and  then,  with  the  true  instinct  of  a  poet,  he 
throws  a  new  and  lasting  halo  over  a  homely  object  by 
associating  it  with  one  more  poetic  and  dignified,  as  when 
in  the  "Praise  of  Chimney-sweepers"  he  notes  the  brill- 
iant white  of  the  little  climbing-boys'  teeth  peering  from 
between  their  sooty  lips.     "  It  is,"  he  adds — 


84  CHARLES  LAMB.  [cbat. 

" '  as  when  a  sable  cloud 
Turns  forth  her  silver  lining  on  the  night,' " 

an  application  of  Milton  which  is  only  not  witty  (to  bor- 
row Sydney  Smith's  skilful  distinction)  because  the  en- 
joyment of  its  wit  is  overpowered  by  our  admiration  of 
its  beauty. 

"  Specimens  of  wit  and  humour  "  afford,  under  the  hap- 
piest conditions,  but  melancholy  reading,  and  none  can 
less  well  afford  to  be  separated  from  their  context  than 
those  of  Lamb.  And  in  his  case  the  context  is  not  merely 
that  of  the  written  or  spoken  matter,  but  that  of  the  man 
himself — his  look,  manner,  and  habits.  To  understand  how 
his  drollery  affected  those  who  were  present,  and  made 
them  anxious  to  preserve  some  record  of  it,  it  is  necessary 
to  keep  in  mind  how  he  looked  and  spoke,  his  odd  face, 
his  stammer,  and  his  wilfulness  in  the  presence  of  uncon- 
genial natures.  There  is  a  diverting  scene  recorded  in 
the  diary  of  Haydon,  the  painter,  which,  however  ampli- 
fied by  Haydon's  facile  pen,  seems  to  bring  before  us  "  an 
evening  with  Charles  Lamb  "  with  more  reality  than  the 
general  recollections  of  Talfourd  and  Procter.  Something 
of  the  "  diluted  insanity  "  that  so  shocked  Mr.  Carlyle  is 
here  shadowed  forth.  Haydon  had  got  up  a  little  dinner, 
on  occasion  of  Wordsworth  being  in  town  (December, 
181*7),  and  Lamb  and  Keats  were  of  the  party.  The  ac- 
count must  be  given  in  his  own  words : 

"  On  December  28th  the  immortal  dinner  came  off  in  my  paint- 
ing-room, with  Jerusalem  towering  up  behind  us  as  a  background. 
Wordsworth  was  in  fine  cue,  and  we  had  a  glorious  set-to— on  Ho- 
mer, Shakspeare,  Milton,  and  VirgiL  Lamb  got  exceedingly  merry, 
and  exquisitely  witty ;  and  his  fun,  in  the  midst  of  Wordsworth's 
solemn  intonations  of  oratory,  was  like  the  sarcasm  and  wit  of  the 
Fool  in  the  intervals  of  Lear's  passion.   He  made  a  speech  and  voted 


T.]  PERSONAL  CHARACTEKISTICS.  85 

me  absent,  tod  made  them  drink  my  health.  '  Now,'  said  Lamb, 
'you  old  lake  poet,  you  rascally  poet,  why  do  you  call  Voltaire 
dull  ?'  We  all  defended  Wordsworth,  and  affirmed  there  was  a  state 
of  mind  when  Voltaire  would  be  dull.  'Well,'  said  Lamb,  'here's 
Voltaire — the  Messiah  of  the  French  nation — and  a  very  proper  one, 
too. 

"  He  then  in  a  strain  of  humour  beyond  description  abused  me 
for  putting  Newton's  head  into  my  picture — '  a  fellow,'  said  he, '  who 
believed  nothing  unless  it  was  as  clear  as  the  three  sides  of  a  tri- 
angle.' And  then  he  and  Keats  agreed  that  he  had  destroyed  all 
the  poetry  of  the  rainbow,  by  reducing  it  to  the  prismatic  colours. 
It  was  impossible  to  resist  him,  and  we  all  drank  '  Newton's  health, 
and  confusion  to  mathematics.'  It  was  delightful  to  see  the  good- 
humour  of  Wordsworth  in  giving  in  to  all  our  froUcs  without  afifeo- 
tation,  and  laughing  as  heartily  as  the  best  of  us. 

"By  this  time  other  friends  joined,  amongst  them  poor  Ritchie, 
who  was  going  to  penetrate  by  Fezzan  to  Timbuctoo.  I  introduced 
him  to  all  as  '  a  gentleman  going  to  Africa.'  Lamb  seemed  to  take 
no  notice ;  but  all  of  a  sudden  he  roared  out, '  Which  is  the  gentle- 
man we  are  going  to  lose?'  We  then  drank  the  victim's  health, 
in  which  Ritchie  joined. 

"  In  the  morning  of  this  delightful  day,  a  gentleman,  a  perfect 
stranger,  had  called  on  me.  He  said  he  knew  my  friends,  had  an 
enthusiasm  for  Wordsworth,  and  begged  I  would  procure  him  the 
happiness  of  an  introduction.  He  told  me  he  was  a  Comptroller  of 
Stamps,  and  often  had  correspondence  with  the  poet.  I  thought  it 
a  liberty ;  but  still,  as  he  seemed  a  gentleman,  I  told  him  he  might 
come. 

"  When  we  retired  to  tea  we  found  the  Comptroller.  In  introduc- 
ing him  to  Wordsworth  I  forgot  to  say  who  he  was.  After  a  little 
time  the  Comptroller  looked  down,  looked  up,  and  said  to  Words- 
worth,  '  Don't  you  think,  sir,  Milton  was  a  great  genius  ?'  Keata 
looked  at  me,  Wordsworth  looked  at  the  Comptroller.  Lamb,  who 
was  dozing  by  the  fire,  turned  round  and  said, '  Pray,  sir,  did  you  say 
Milton  was  a  great  genius  ?'  '  No,  sir ;  I  asked  Mr.  Wordsworth  if  he 
were  not.'  '  Oh,'  said  Lamb, '  then  you  are  a  silly  fellow.'  '  Charles  ! 
my  dear  Charles  !'  said  Wordsworth.  But  Lamb,  perfectly  innocent 
of  the  confusion  he  had  created,  was  oflE  again  by  the  fire. 

"After  an  awful  pause  the  Comptroller  said,  'Don't  yoc  think 
6 


86  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

Newton  a  great  genius  ?'  I  could  not  stand  it  any  longer.  Eeats 
put  Iiis  head  into  my  books.  Ritchie  squeezed  in  a  laugh.  Words- 
worth seemed  asking  himself,  '  Who  is  this  ?'  Lamb  got  up  and, 
taking  a  candle,  said, '  Sir,  will  you  allow  me  to  look  at  your  phreno- 
logical development?'  He  then  turned  his  back  on  the  poor  man, 
and  at  every  question  of  the  Comptroller  he  chanted — 

"  ' "  Diddle,  diddle,  dumpling,  my  son  John 
Went  to  bed  with  hia  breeches  on."  ' 

The  man  in  oflBce  finding  Wordsworth  did  not  know  who  he  was, 
said  in  a  spasmodic  and  half-chuckling  anticipation  of  assured  vic- 
tory, '  I  have  had  the  honour  of  some  correspondence  with  you,  Mr. 
Wordsworth.'  '  With  me,  sir  ?'  said  Wordsworth, '  not  that  I  remem- 
ber.' '  Don't  you,  sir  ?  I  am  a  Comptroller  of  Stamps.'  There  was 
a  dead  silence ;  the  Comptroller  evidently  thinking  that  was  enough. 
While  we  were  waiting  for  Wordsworth's  reply.  Lamb  sung  out — 

"'"Hey  diddle  diddle, 

The  cat  and  the  fiddle." ' 

*My  dear  Charles !'  said  Wordsworth. 

" ' "  Diddle,  diddle,  dumpling,  my  son  John," ' 

chanted  Lamb ;  and  then  rising,  exclaimed, '  Do  let  me  have  another 
look  at  that  gentleman's  organs.'  Keats  and  I  hurried  Lamb  into 
the  painting-room,  shut  the  door,  and  gave  way  to  inextinguishable 
laughter.  Monkhouse  followed  and  tried  to  get  Lamb  away.  We 
went  back,  but  the  Comptroller  was  irreconcilable.  We  soothed  and 
smiled,  and  asked  him  to  supper.  He  stayed,  though  his  dignity  was 
sorely  affected.  However,  being  a  good-natured  man,  we  parted  all 
in  good-humour,  and  no  ill  effects  followed. 

"  All  the  while,  until  Monkhouse  succeeded,  we  could  hear  Lamb 
Btruggling  in  the  painting  -  room  and  calling  at  intervals,  '  Who  la 
that  fellow  ?    Allow  me  to  see  his  organs  once  more.' " 

It  is  not  diflScult  to  guess  how  Carlyle  or  Macready 
would  have  commented  on  this  scene,  had  they  been 
present. 

But  the  Wednesday  evenings  when  Charles  and  Mary 


v.]  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  Vt 

Lamb  kept  open  house — if  the  term  could  be  applied  to 
the  slender  resources  of  the  garret  in  Inner  Temple  Lane 
— produced  something  better  in  the  way  of  intellectual  re- 
sult than  the  above.  Talfourd  and  Procter  have  told  us 
the  names  and  qualities  of  the  guests  who  gathered  about 
the  Lambs  on  these  occasions,  and  the  homely  fare  and 
the  cordial  greeting  that  awaited  them — the  low,  dingy 
rooms,  with  books  and  prints  for  their  chief  furniture,  the 
two  tables  set  out  for  whist,  and  the  cold  beef  and  can  of 
porter  on  the  sideboard,  to  which  each  guest  helped  him- 
self as  he  chose.  On  these  occasions  would  be  found 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  when  in  town,  and  then  the 
company  resolved  themselves  willingly  into  a  band  of 
contented  listeners;  but  at  other  times  no  difference  of 
rank  would  be  recognized,  and  poets  and  critics,  painters, 
journalists,  barristers,  men  in  public  offices,  dramatists,  and 
actors  met  on  terms  of  unchallenged  equality.  Hazlitt 
has  made  an  attempt,  in  a  well-known  essay,  to  reproduce 
an  actual  conversation  at  which  he  was  present  on  one  of 
these  Wednesdays.  He  admits  that,  writing  twenty  years 
after  the  event,  memory  was  ill  able  to  recall  the  actual 
words  of  the  speakers.  But  even  when  allowance  is  made 
for  the  lapse  of  time,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  Hazlitt  had 
much  of  the  Boswellian  faculty.  The  subject  that  had 
been  discussed  was  "Persons  one  would  wish  to  hare 
seen."  Isaac  Newton  and  Locke,  Shakspeare  and  Mil- 
ton, and  many  others,  were  suggested,  and  all  dismissed 
for  one  reason  or  another  by  Lamb.  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
and  Fulke  Greville  were  two  he  substituted  for  these. 
But  it  is  impossible  to  accept  the  following  sentence  as  a 
sample  of  Lamb's  conversational  manner:  "When  I  look 
at  that  obscure  but  gorgeous  prose  composition,  the  Urn 

Burial,  I  seem  to  myself  to  look  into  a  deep  abyas,  at 
G 


88  CHARLES  LAHB.  [oHir. 

the  bottom  of  which  are  hid  pearls  and  rich  treasure ;  or, 
it  is  like  a  stately  labyrinth  of  doubt  and  withering  spec- 
ulation, and  I  would  invoke  the  spirit  of  the  author  to 
lead  me  through  it."  This  style  is  equally  unlike  that  of 
essay  and  letter,  and  nothing  so  pointless  and  so  grandi- 
ose, we  are  sure,  ever  proceeded  from  his  lips.  It  was 
not  so  that  Lamb,  as  Haydon  expressed  it,  **  stuttered  out 
his  quaintness  in  snatches,  like  the  Fool  in  LearJ'^  But 
we  can  distinguish  that  stammering  tongue,  if  we  listen, 
above  the  din  of  the  supper  party  and  the  whist-table — 
{not  rigorous  as  Mrs.  Battle's) — ranging  from  the  maddest 
drollery  to  the  subtlest  criticism,  calling  out  to  Martin 
Burney,  *'  Martin,  if  dirt  were  trumps,  what  a  hand  you'd 
have!" — or  declaring  that  he  had  once  known  a  young 
man  who  "  wanted  to  be  a  tailor,  but  hadn't  the  spliit " — 
or  pronouncing,  a  propos  of  the  water-cure,  that  it  was 
neither  new  nor  wonderful,  for  that  it  was  at  least  as  old 
as  the  Flood,  when,  "in  his  opinion,"  it  killed  more  than 
it  cured.  We  can  hear  him  drawing  some  sound  distinc- 
tion, as  between  the  ingrained  jealousy  of  Leontes  and  the 
mere  credulity  of  Othello,  or  contrasting  the  noble  sim- 
plicity of  the  Nut- Brown  Maid  with  Prior's  vapid  para- 
phrase, in  Henry  and  Emma.  We  can  listen  to  him  as 
he  fearlessly  decried  all  his  friends'  idols  of  the  hour,  By- 
ron or  Shelley  or  Goethe,  and  raved  with  something  of  a 
perverse  enthusiasm  over  some  forgotten  worthy  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  We  can  hear  him  pleading  for  the 
"  divine  compliments  "  of  Pope,  and  repeating,  with  a  fal- 
tering voice,  the  well-known  lines : 

"  Happy  my  studies,  when  by  these  approved ! 
Happier  their  author,  when  by  these  beloved ! 
From  these  the  world  will  judge  of  men  and  books, 
Jtfot  from  the  Buraets,  Oldmixons,  and  Gookes." 


T.]  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISnC&  89 

It  was  this  range  of  sympathy,  yet  coupled  with  such 
strange  limitations  —  this  alternation  of  tenderness  and 
frolic  —  of  scholarly  fulness  and  luminous  insight,  that 
drew  the  poet  and  the  critic,  as  well  as  the  boon  com- 
panion, to  Lamb's  Wednesday  nights. 

Lamb's  letters  at  this  time  afford  excellent  specimens  of 
his  drollery  and  high  animal  spirits.  The  following  was 
addressed  to  Manning  early  in  1810.  Manning  was  then 
in  China : 

"Dear  Manning, — When  I  last  wrote  you  I  was  in  lodgings.  I 
am  now  in  chambers,  No.  4,  Inner  Temple  Lane,  where  I  should  be 
happy  to  see  you  any  evening.  Bring  any  of  your  friends,  the  man- 
darins, with  you.  I  have  two  sitting-rooms ;  I  call  them  so  par  ex- 
cellence, for  you  may  stand,  or  loll,  or  lean,  or  try  any  posture  in  them, 
but  they  are  best  for  sitting ;  not  squatting  down  Japanese  fashion, 
but  the  more  decorous  mode  which  European  usage  has  consecrated. 
I  have  two  of  these  rooms  on  the  third  floor,  and  five  sleeping,  cook- 
ing, &c.,  rooms  on  the  fourth  floor.  In  my  best  room  is  a  choice  col- 
lection of  the  works  of  Hogarth,  an  English  painter  of  some  humour. 
In  my  next  best  are  shelves,  containing  a  small  but  well-chosen  li- 
brary. My  best  room  commands  a  court  in  which  there  are  trees  and 
a  pump,  the  water  of  which  is  excellent  cold,  with  brandy,  and  not 
very  insipid  without.  Here  I  hope  to  set  up  my  rest,  and  not  quit 
till  Mr.  Powell,  the  undertaker,  gives  me  notice  that  I  may  have  pos- 
session of  my  last  lodging.  He  lets  lodgings  for  single  gentlemen. 
I  sent  you  a  parcel  of  books  by  my  last,  to  give  you  some  idea  of  the 
state  of  European  literature.  There  comes  with  this  two  volumes, 
done  up  as  letters,  of  minor  poetry,  a  sequel  to  Mrs.  Leicester;  the 
best  you  may  suppose  mine  ;  the  next  best  are  my  coadjutor's ;  you 
may  amuse  yourself  in  guessing  them  out ;  but  I  must  tell  you  mine 
are  but  one-third  in  quantity  of  the  whole.  So  much  for  a  very  deli- 
cate subject.  It  is  hard  to  speak  of  one's  own  self,  &c.  Holcroft 
had  finished  his  life  when  I  wrote  to  you,  and  Hazlitt  has  since  fin- 
ished his  life :  I  do  not  mean  his  own  life,  but  he  has  finished  a  fife 
of  Holcroft,  which  is  going  to  press.  Tuthill  is  Dr.  Tuthill ;  I  con- 
tinue Mr.  Lamb.  I  have  published  a  little  book  for  children  on  titles 
20 


90  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

of  honour ;  and  to  give  them  some  idea  of  the  difference  of  rank  and 
gradual  rising  I  have  made  a  little  scale,  supposing  myself  to  receive 
the  following  various  accessions  of  dignity  from  the  king,  who  is  the 
fountain  of  honour.  As  the  first,  1,  Mr.  C.  Lamb ;  2,  C.  Lamb,  Esq. ; 
8,  Sir  C.  Lamb,  Bart. ;  4,  Baron  Lamb  of  Stamford' ;  5,  Viscount 
Lamb ;  6,  Earl  Lamb ;  Y,  Marquis  Lamb ;  8,  Duke  Lamb.  It  would 
look  like  quibbling  to  carry  it  on  further,  and  especially  as  it  is  not 
necessary  for  children  to  go  beyond  the  ordinary  titles  of  sub-regal 
dignity  in  our  own  country;  otherwise,  I  have  sometimes  in  my 
dreams  imagined  myself  still  advancing — as  9th,  King  Lamb ;  10th, 
Emperor  Lamb ;  1 1th,  Pope  Innocent,  higher  than  which  is  nothing. 
Puns  I  have  not  made  many  (nor  punch  much)  since  the  date  of  my 
last ;  one  I  cannot  help  relating.  A  constable  in  Salisbury  Cathedral 
was  telling  me  that  eight  people  dined  at  the  top  of  the  spire  of  the 
cathedral,  upon  which  I  remarked  that  they  must  be  very  sharp  set. 
But  in  general,  I  cultivate  the  reasoning  part  of  my  mind  more  than 
the  imaginative.  I  am  stuffed  out  so  with  eating  turkey  for  dinner 
and  another  turkey  for  supper  yesterday  (Turkey  in  Europe  and  Tur- 
key in  Asia),  that  I  can't  jog  on.  It  is  New  Year  here.  That  is,  it 
was  New  Year  half  a  year  back  when  I  was  writing  this.  Nothing 
puzzles  me  more  than  time  and  space,  and  yet  nothing  puzzles  me 
less,  for  I  never  think  about  them.  The  Persian  ambassador  is  the 
principal  thing  talked  of  now.  I  sent  some  people  to  see  him  wor- 
ship the  sun  on  Primrose  Hill,  at  half-past  six  in  the  morning,  28th 
November ;  but  he  did  not  come,  which  makes  me  think  the  old  fire- 
worshippers  are  a  sect  almost  extinct  in  Persia.  The  Persian  am- 
bassador's name  is  Shaw  Ali  Mirza.  The  common  people  call  him 
Shaw  nonsense.  While  I  think  of  it,  I  have  put  three  letters  besides 
my  own  three  into  the  India  post  for  you,  from  your  brother,  sister, 
and  some  gentleman  whose  name  I  forget.  Will  they,  have  they,  did 
they  come  safe  ?  The  distance  you  are  at  cuts  up  tenses  by  the  root 
I  think  you  said  you  did  not  know  Kate  »*«******.  I  express 
her  by  nine  stars,  though  she  is  but  one.  You  must  have  seen  her  at 
her  father's.  Try  and  remember  her.  Coleridge  is  bringing  out  a 
paper  in  weekly  numbers,  called  the  Friend,  which  I  would  send  if  I 
could ;  but  the  diflSculty  I  had  in  getting  the  packets  of  books  out  to 

»  "  Where  my  family  came  from.    I  have  chosen  that,  if  ever  I 
should  have  my  choice." 


▼,]  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  M 

you  before  deters  me ;  and  you'll  want  something  new  to  read  when 
you  come  home.  Except  Kate,  I  have  had  no  vision  of  excellence 
this  year,  and  she  passed  by  like  the  queen  on  her  coronation  day ; 
you  don't  know  whether  you  saw  her  or  not.  Kate  is  fifteen ;  I  go 
about  moping,  and  sing  the  old  pathetic  ballad  I  used  to  like  in  my 
youth — 

" '  She's  sweet  fifteen, 
I'm  one  year  nwre? 

Mrs,  Bland  sang  it  in  boy's  clothes  the  first  time  I  heard  it.  I  some- 
times think  the  lowpr  notes  in  my  voice  are  like  Mrs.  Bland's.  That 
glorious  singer,  Braham,  one  of  my  lights,  is  fled.  He  was  for  a  sea- 
son. He  was  a  rare  composition  of  the  Jew,  the  gentleman,  and  the 
angel ;  yet  all  these  elements  mixed  up  so  kindly  in  him  that  you 
could  not  tell  which  preponderated ;  but  he  is  gone,  and  one  Phillips 

is  engaged  instead.     Kate  is  vanished,  but  Miss  B is  always  to 

be  met  with ! 

" '  Queens  drop  away,  while  blue-legged  maukin  thrives, 
And  courtly  Mildred  dies  while  country  Madge  survives.' 

That  is  not  my  poetry,  but  Quarles' ;  but  haven't  you  observed  that 
the  rarest  things  are  the  least  obvious  ?  Don't  show  anybody  the 
names  in  this  letter.  I  write  confidentially,  and  wish  this  letter  to 
be  considered  as  private.  Hazlitt  has  written  a  grammar  for  God- 
win ;  Godwin  sells  it  bound  up  with  a  treatise  of  his  own  on  lan- 
guage, but  the  grey  mare  is  the  better  horse.      I  don't  allude  to 

Mrs. ,  but  to  the   word  grammar,  which  comes  near  to  grey 

mare,  if  you  observe,  in  sound.  That  figure  is  called  paranomasia  in 
Greek.  I  am  sometimes  happy  in  it.  An  old  woman  begged  of  me 
for  charity.  'Ah!  sir,'  said  she,  'I  have  seen  better  days.'  'So 
have  I,  good  woman,'  I  replied ;  but  I  meant  literally,  days  not  so 
rainy  and  overcast  as  that  on  which  she  begged ;  she  meant  more 
prosperous  days.  Mr.  Dawe  is  made  Associate  of  the  Royal  Academy. 
By  what  law  of  association  I  can't  guess." 

The  humour  of  this  letter — and  there  are  many  as  good 
— is  not  the  humour  of  the  Essays  of  Elia.  It  is  not 
charged  with  thought  like  them,  nor  does  it  reach  the  same 
depths  of  feeling.     But  it  is  the  humour  of  a  man  of  gen- 


92  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

ius.  The  inventiveness  of  it  all ;  the  simplicity  with  which 
the  most  daring  flights  of  fancy  are  hazarded ;  the  amazing 
improbability  of  the  assertion  that  it  was  the  "  common 
people  "  who  called  the  ambassador  "  Shaw  nonsense ;"  the 
gravity  with  which  it  is  set  down  that  it  is  not  necessary 
in  England  to  teach  children  the  degrees  of  rank  beyond 
royalty — all  this  is  delightful  in  the  extreme,  and  the  power 
to  enjoy  it  may  be  taken  as  a  test  of  the  reader's  capacity 
for  understanding  Lamb's  place  as  a  humourist. 

The  eight  years  spent  in  Inner  Temple  Lane  were,  in 
Talfourd's  judgment,  the  happiest  of  Lamb's  life.  His  in- 
come was  steadily  rising,  and  he  no  longer  had  to  bear  the 
pressure  of  inconvenient  poverty.  Friends  of  a  higher  or- 
der than  the  "friendly  harpies"  he  has  told  us  of,  who 
came  about  him  for  his  suppers,  and  the  brandy-and-water 
afterwards,  were  gradually  gathering  round  him.  Hazlitt, 
and  Crabb  Robinson,  and  Procter,  and  Talfourd  were  men 
of  tastes  and  capacities  akin  to  his  own.  The  period  was 
not  a  fertile  one  in  literary  production.  The  little  collec- 
tion of  stories  for  children,  called  Mrs.  Leicester's  School, 
written  jointly  with  his  sister,  and  the  volume  of  Poetry 
for  Children,  also  a  joint  production,  constitute — with  one 
notable  exception — the  whole  of  Lamb's  literary  labours 
during  this  time.  The  exception  named  is  the  contribu- 
tion to  Leigh  Hunt's  periodical,  the  Reflector,  of  two  or 
three  masterly  pieces  of  criticism,  which  may  be  more  con- 
veniently noticed  later  in  this  memoir. 

Meantime  the  cloud  of  domestic  anxiety  was  still  unlift- 
ed.  Mary  Lamb's  illnesses  were  frequent  and  embarrass- 
ing. An  extract  from  a  letter  to  Miss  Hutchinson,  Mrs. 
Wordsworth's  sister  (October,  1815),  tells  once  more  the 
often-told  tale,  and  shows  the  unaltered  patience  and  seri- 
ousness of  her  brother's  faithful  guardianship.     The  pass* 


▼.]  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  98 

age  has  a  further  interest  in  the  picture  it  incidentally 
draws  of  the  happier  days  of  the  brother  and  sister :  "  I 
am  forced  to  be  the  replier  to  your  letter,  for  Mary  has 
been  ill,  and  gone  from  home  these  five  weeks  yesterday. 
She  has  left  me  very  lonely  and  very  miserable.  I  stroll 
about,  but  there  is  no  rest  but  at  one's  own  fireside,  and 
there  is  no  rest  for  me  there  now.  I  look  forward  to  the 
worse  half  being  past,  and  keep  up  as  well  as  I  can.  She 
has  begun  to  show  some  favourable  symptoms.  The  re- 
turn of  her  disorder  has  been  frightfully  soon  this  time, 
with  scarce  a  six  months'  interval.  I  am  almost  afraid  my 
worry  of  spirits  about  the  East  India  House  was  partly  the 
cause  of  her  illness,  but  one  always  imputes  it  to  the  cause 
next  at  hand ;  more  probably  it  comes  from  some  cause  we 
have  no  control  over  or  conjecture  of.  It  cuts  great  slices 
out  of  the  time,  the  little  time,  we  shall  have  to  live  to- 
gether. I  don't  know  but  the  recurrence  of  these  illnesses 
might  help  me  to  sustain  her  death  better  than  if  we  had 
no  partial  separations.  But  I  won't  talk  of  death.  I  will 
imagine  us  immortal,  or  forget  that  we  are  otherwise.  By 
God's  blessing,  in  a  few  weeks  we  may  be  making  our  meal 
together,  or  sitting  in  the  front  row  of  the  Pit  at  Drury 
Lane,  or  taking  our  evening  walk  past  the  theatres,  to  look 
at  the  outside  of  them,  at  least,  if  not  to  be  tempted  in. 
Then  we  forget  that  we  are  assailable ;  we  are  strong  for 
the  time  as  rocks ; — *  the  wind  is  tempered  to  the  shorn 
Lambs.' " 

6* 


CHAPTER  VL 

RTTS8KLL   STRBET,  COVENT  GARDEN. THE   ESSAYS   OF  KLIA. 

[1817-1823.] 

In  the  autumn  of  1817  Lamb  and  his  sister  left  the  Tem- 
ple, their  home  for  seventeen  years,  for  lodgings  in  Great 
Russell  Street,  Covent  Garden,  the  corner  of  Bow  Street, 
and  the  site  where  Will's  CofEee-house  once  stood.  "  Here 
■we  are,"  Lamb  writes  to  Miss  Wordsworth  in  November  of 
this  year,  "transplanted  from  our  native  soil.  I  thought 
we  never  could  have  been  torn  up  from  the  Temple.  In- 
deed it  was  an  ugly  wrench,  but  like  a  tooth,  now  'tis  out, 
and  I  am  easy.  We  never  can  strike  root  so  deep  in  any 
other  ground.  This,  where  we  are,  is  a  light  bit  of  gar- 
dener's mould,  and  if  they  take  us  up  from  it,  it  will  cost 
no  blood  and  groans,  like  mandrakes  pulled  up.  We  are 
in  the  individual  spot  I  like  best  in  all  this  great  city.  The 
theatres  with  all  their  noises ;  Covent  Garden,  dearer  to  me 
than  any  gardens  of  Alcinous,  where  we  are  morally  sure 
of  the  earliest  peas  and  'sparagus.  Bow  Street,  where  the 
thieves  are  examined  within  a  few  yards  of  us.  Mary  had 
not  been  here  four-and-twenty  hours  before  she  saw  a  thief. 
She  sits  at  the  window  working ;  and  casually  throwing 
out  her  eyes,  she  sees  a  concourse  of  people  coming  this 


CHAP.  VI.]        RUSSELL  STREET,  COVENT  GARDEN.  96 

way,  with  a  constable  to  conduct  the  solemnity.     These 
little  incidents  agreeably  diversify  a  female  life." 

During  the  seventeen  years  in  the  Temple  Lamb's  world- 
ly fortunes  had  improved.  His  salary  from  the  India 
House  was  increasing  every  year,  and  he  was  beginning  to 
add  to  his  income  by  authorship.  He  was  already  known 
as  critic  and  essayist  to  an  appreciative  few.  Friends 
were  gathering  round  him,  and  acquaintances  who  enjoyed 
his  conversation  and  his  weekly  suppers  (Wednesday  even- 
ing was  open  house  in  the  Temple  days)  were  increasing  in 
rather  an  embarrassing  degree.  Ever  since  he  had  had  a 
house  of  his  own,  he  had  suffered  from  the  intrusion  of 
such  troublesome  visitors.  A  too  easy  good-nature  on  his 
part  may  have  been  to  blame  for  this.  He  took  often,  as 
he  confesses,  a  perverse  pleasure  in  noticing  and  befriend- 
ing those  whom  others,  with  good  reason,  looked  shyly  on, 
and  as  time  went  on  he  began  to  find  very  little  of  his 
leisure  time  that  he  could  call  his  own.  It  may  have  been 
with  some  hope  of  beginning  a  freer  life  on  new  soil  that 
he  resolved  to  tear  himself  from  his  beloved  Temple. 
If  so  he  was  not  successful.  A  remarkable  letter  to  Mrs. 
Wordsworth,  a  few  months  only  after  his  removal  to  Rus- 
sell Street,  tells  the  same  old  story  of  well-meaning  intrud- 
ers. "The  reason  why  I  cannot  write  letters  at  home  is 
that  I  am  never  alone."  "  Except  my  morning's  walk  to 
the  office,  which  is  like  treading  on  sands  of  gold  for  that 
reason,  I  am  never  so.  I  cannot  walk  home  from  oflBce, 
but  some  oflBcious  friend  offers  his  unwelcome  courtesies 
to  accompany  me.  All  the  morning  I  am  pestered.  Even- 
ing company  I  should  always  like,  had  I  any  mornings, 
but  I  am  saturated  with  human  faces  {divine  forsooth), 
and  voices  all  the  golden  morning ;  and  five  evenings  in  a 
week  would  be  as  much  as  I  should  covet  to  be  in  com- 


f6  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap 

pany,  but  I  assure  you  that  it  is  a  wonderful  week  in  which 
I  can  get  two,  or  one  to  myself.  I  am  never  C.  L.,  but  al- 
ways C.  L.  &  Co.  He,  who  thought  it  not  good  for  man 
to  be  alone,  preserve  me  from  the  more  prodigious  mon- 
strosity of  being  never  by  myself."  "  All  I  mean  is  that 
I  am  a  little  over-companied,  but  not  that  I  have  any  ani- 
mosity against  the  good  creatures  that  are  so  anxious  to 
drive  away  the  harpy  solitude  from  me.  I  like  'em,  and 
cards,  and  a  cheerful  glass ;  but  I  mean  merely  to  give  you 
an  idea,  between  oflBce  confinement  and  after- oflBce  society, 
how  little  time  I  can  call  my  own."  It  is  not  difficult  to 
form  an  idea  from  this  frank  disclosure,  of  the  hindrances 
and  the  snares  that  beset  Lamb's  comfort  and  acted  harm- 
fully on  his  temper  and  habits.  It  was  fortunate  for  him 
that  at  this  juncture  he  should  have  been  led  to  discover 
where  his  powers  as  a  writer  indisputably  lay,  and  to  find 
the  exact  opportunity  for  their  exercise. 

In  this  same  year,  1818,  a  young  bookseller,  Charles 
Oilier,  whose  acquaintance  he  had  recently  made,  proposed 
to  him  to  bring  out  a  complete  collection  of  his  scattered 
writings.  Some  of  these,  Jolin  Woodvil  and  Rosamund 
Gray,  had  been  published  separately  in  former  years,  and 
were  now  out  of  print.  Others  were  interred  among  ex- 
tinct magazines  and  journals,  and  these  were  by  far  the 
most  worthy  of  preservation.  The  edition  appeared  in 
the  year  1818,  in  two  handsome  volumes.  It  contained, 
besides  John  Woodvil  and  Rosamund  Chray,  and  a  fair 
quantity  of  verse  (including  the  Farewell  to  Tobacco),  the 
Recollections  of  Christ's  Hospital,  the  essay  on  The  Trage- 
dies of  Shakspeare,  considered  with  reference  to  their  fitness 
for  stage  representation,  and  that  on  The  Genius  and  Char- 
acter of  Hogarth,  these  two  last  having  originally  appeared 
in  Leigh  Hunt's  magazine,  the  Reflector.    The  edition  was 


VI.]  RUSSELL  STREET,  COVENT  GARDEN.  91 

prefaced  by  a  dedicatory  letter  to  Coleridge.  "  You  will 
smile,"  wrote  Lamb,  "  to  see  the  slender  labours  of  your 
friend  designated  by  the  title  of  Works/  but  such  was  the 
wish  of  the  gentlemen  who  had  kindly  undertaken  the 
trouble  of  collecting  them,  and  from  their  judgment  there 
could  be  no  appeal."  He  goes  on  pleasantly  to  recall  to 
his  old  school-fellow  how,  in  company  with  their  friend 
Lloyd,  they  had  so  many  years  before  tried  their  poetical 
fortune.  "  You  will  find  your  old  associate,"  he  adds, "  in 
his  second  volume,  dwindled  into  prose  and  criticism.''^ 
Lamb  must  have  felt,  as  he  wrote  the  word,  that  "  dwin- 
dled "  was  hardly  the  fitting  term.  He  had  written  noth- 
ing as  yet  so  noble  in  matter  and  in  style,  nothing  so 
worthy  to  live,  as  the  analysis  of  the  characters  of  Hamlet 
and  Lear  in  the  essay  on  Shakspeare's  Tragedies.  Lamb's 
high  rank,  as  essayist  and  critic,  must  have  been  put  be- 
yond dispute  by  the  publication  under  his  own  name  of 
his  collected  Works.  He  was  already  well  known  and  ap- 
preciated by  some  of  the  finest  minds  of  his  day.  He  now 
addressed  a  wider  public,  and  the  edition  of  1818  gave  him 
a  status  he  had  not  before  enjoyed.  And  yet  at  this  date, 
various  as  were  the  contents  of  the  two  volumes,  he  had 
not  found  the  opportunity  that  was  to  call  forth  his  spe- 
cial faculty. 

The  opportunity  was,  however,  at  hand.  In  January, 
1820,  Baldwin,  Cradock,  and  Joy,  the  publishers,  brought 
out  the  first  number  of  a  new  monthly  journal,  reviving  in 
it  the  name  of  an  earlier,  and  extinct  periodical,  the  London 
Magazine.  The  editor  they  chose  was  John  Scott,  a  com- 
petent critic  and  journalist  who  had  formerly  edited  the 
Champion  newspaper.  The  aim  of  this  new  venture,  as 
set  forth  in  the  opening  prospectus,  was  to  be  of  a  higher 
and  more  intellectual  class  than  its  many  popular  contem- 


98  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

poraries.  It  was  to  be  a  journal  of  criticism  and  the 
Belles  Lettres,  including  original  poetry,  and  yet  to  contain 
in  a  monthly  appendix  such  statistics  of  trade  and  general 
home  and  foreign  intelligence  as  would  make  it  useful  to 
those  of  a  less  literary  turn.  The  magazine  had  an  exist- 
ence of  five  years,  undergoing  many  changes  of  fortune, 
and  passing  in  that  time  through  many  hands.  Its  first 
editor,  Mr.  Scott,  was  killed  in  a  duel  in  the  summer  of 
1821,  and  its  first  publishers  parted  with  it  to  Taylor  and 
Hessey.  At  no  period  of  its  career  does  it  seem  to  have 
been  a  marked  commercial  success.  Either  capital  was 
wanted,  or  management  was  unsatisfactory,  for  the  list  of 
contributors  during  these  five  years  was  remarkable.  Mr. 
Procter  and  Hood  have  discoursed  pleasantly  on  their  va- 
rious fellow-contributors  to  the  magazine,  and  the  social 
gatherings  held  once  a  month  by  Taylor  and  Hessey  (who 
employed  no  editor)  at  the  oflBce  in  Waterloo  Place. 
Hazlitt,  Allan  Cunningham,  Gary  (the  translator  of  Dante), 
John  Hamilton  Reynolds,  George  Darley,  Keats,  James 
Montgomery,  Sir  John  Bowring,  Hartley  Coleridge,  were 
regular  or  occasional  contributors.  Carlyle  published  his 
Life  and  Writings  of  Schiller  in  the  later  volumes,  and 
De  Quincey  (besides  other  papers)  his  Opium-eater. 

Talfourd  thinks  that  Lamb  owed  to  his  intimacy  with 
Hazlitt  his  introduction  to  the  managers  of  the  London. 
He  was  not  on  the  staff  from  the  beginning.  The  first 
number  was  issued  in  January,  1820,  and  Lamb's  first  con- 
tribution was  in  the  August  following.  In  the  number 
for  that  month  appeared  an  article,  with  the  not  very  at- 
tractive title.  Recollections  of  the  South  Sea  House.  As 
to  its  authorship  there  was  no  indication  except  the  signa- 
ture at  the  end — "Elia."  Lamb  has  himself  told  us  the 
origin  of  this  immortal  nom  de  plume.     When  he  had 


tl]  RUSSELL  STREET,  COVENT  GARDEN.  99 

written  his  first  essay,  wishing  to  remain  anonymous,  and 
yet  wanting  a  convenient  mark  for  identification  in  articles 
to  come,  he  bethought  him  of  an  Italian  of  the  name  of 
Elia,  who  had  been  fellow -clerk  with  him  thirty  years 
before,  during  the  few  months  that  he  had  been  employed 
as  a  boy  in  the  South  Sea  House.  As  a  practical  joke 
(Lamb  confesses)  he  borrowed  his  old  friend's  name, 
hoping  to  make  his  excuses  when  they  should  next  meet. 
"  I  went  the  other  day,"  writes  Lamb  in  June,  1821, "  (not 
having  seen  him  for  a  year)  to  laugh  over  with  him  at 
my  usurpation  of  his  name,  and  found  him,  alas!  no 
more  than  a  name,  for  he  died  of  consumption  eleven 
months  ago,  and  I  knew  not  of  it.  So  the  name  has  fair- 
ly devolved  to  me,  I  think,  and  'tis  all  he  has  left  me." 
Lamb  continued  to  use  it  for  his  contributions  to  the 
London  and  other  periodicals  for  many  years.  It  is  doubt- 
ful if  the  name  has  ever  been  generally  pronounced  as 
Lamb  intended.  "  Call  him  Ellia,"  he  wrote  to  his  pub- 
lisher, Mr.  Taylor,  but  the  world  has  taken  more  kindly  to 
the  broad  e  and  the  single  1. 

When 'the  first  series  of  the  Essays  of  Elia  appeared  in 
a  collected  form  in  1823,  it  consisted  of  some  five-and- 
twenty  essays,  contributed  at  the  rate  of  one  a  month  (oc- 
casionally two)  with  scarcely  an  intermission  between  Au- 
gust, 1820,  and  December,  1822.  It  would  seem  as  if  no 
conditions  had  been  imposed  upon  Lamb  by  the  editor  as 
to  the  subject-matter  of  his  essays.  He  was  allowed  to 
roam  at  his  own  free-will  over  the  experiences  of  his  life, 
and  to  reproduce  them  in  any  form,  and  with  any  discur- 
siveness into  which  he  might  be  allured  on  the  way.  The 
matter  of  the  essays  proved  to  be  largely  personal,  or  at 
least  to  savour  of  the  autobiographical.  The  first  essay 
already  referred  to  professed  to  be  a  recollection  of  the 


100  CHARLES  LAMB.  [char 

South  Sea  House  as  it  existed  thirty  years  before,  with 
sketches  of  several  of  the  clerks  who  had  been  Lamb's 
contemporaries.  As,  however,  he  was  a  boy  of  fifteen  at 
the  time  he  entered,  and  moreover  was  at  most  two  years 
in  the  office,  it  is  probable  that  he  owed  much  of  the 
knowledge  exhibited  in  the  paper  to  his  elder  brother 
John,  who  remained  in  the  office  long  after  Charles  had 
left  it.  Lamb  was  in  the  habit  of  spending  his  short  sum- 
mer holiday  in  one  or  other  of  the  two  great  university 
towns,  and  his  second  essay  was  an  account  of  Oxford  in 
the  Vacation.  The  third  in  order  of  appearance  was  an 
account  of  Christ's  Hospital,  on  that  side  of  it  which  had 
not  been  touched  in  his  earlier  paper  on  the  same  subject. 
The  fourth  was  a  discursive  meditation  on  the  Two  Races 
ofMen,hy  which  Lamb  meant  those  who  borrow  and  those 
who  lend,  which  he  illustrated  by  the  example  of  one  Ralph 
Bigod  (whom  he  had  known  in  his  journalist  days  on  the 
Albion),2iX\di  Coleridge,  who  so  freely  borrowed  from  Lamb's 
library,  and  so  bountifully  returned  the  loan  with  interest 
in  the  shape  of  marginal  annotations.  In  the  essay,  Mrs. 
Battle's  Opinions  on  Whist,  he  describes  an  old  lady,  a 
relative  of  the  Plumer  family,  whom  he  had  known  in 
person,  or  by  repute,  at  the  old  mansion  in  Hertfordshire. 
In  the  chapter  On  Ears,  his  own  want  of  musical  ear,  and 
the  kind  of  impressions  from  musical  sounds  to  which  he 
was  susceptible,  is  the  subject  of  his  confidences.  In  My 
Relations,  and  Mockery  End  in  Hertfordshire  he  draws 
portraits,  under  the  disguise  of  two  cousins,  James  and 
Bridget  Elia,  of  his  brother  John  and  his  sister  Mary. 
The  Old  Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple  comprises  all  that 
he  remembered  of  his  boyhood  spent  in  the  Temple,  with 
particulars  of  the  more  notable  Masters  of  the  Bench  of 
that  day,  obtained  no  doubt  from  his  father,  the  Lovel  of 


Vi]  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA.  101 

the  essay,  and  his  father's  old  and  loyal  friend  Randal  Nor- 
ris,  the  sub-treasurer  of  the  Inner  Temple.  Other  essays, 
such  as  that  On  Chimney  Sweepers,  and  The  Decay  of  Beg- 
gars  in  the  Metropolis,  contain  the  results  of  that  observing 
eye  with  which  he  had  daily  surveyed  the  streets  of  hia 
beloved  city  for  so  many  years,  "looking  no  one  in  the 
face  for  more  than  a  moment,"  as  Mr.  Procter  has  told  us, 
yet  "  contriving  to  see  everything  as  he  went  on." 

The  opening  essay  on  the  South  Sea  House  shows  that 
there  was  no  need  to  feel  his  way,  either  in  matter  or 
style.  He  began  in  the  fulness  of  his  observation,  and 
with  a  style  already  formed,  and  adapting  itself  to  all 
changes  of  thought  and  feeling.  His  description  of  John 
Tipp,  the  accountant,  was  enough  to  show  that  not  only  a 
keen  observer,  but  a  master  of  English  was  at  work : 

"  At  the  desk,  Tipp  was  quite  another  sort  of  creature.  Thence 
all  ideas  that  were  purely  ornamental  were  banished.  You  could 
not  speak  of  anything  romantic  without  rebuke.  Politics  were  ex- 
cluded. A  newspaper  was  thought  too  refined  and  abstracted.  The 
whole  duty  of  man  consisted  in  writing  off  dividend  warrants.  The 
striking  of  the  annual  balance  in  the  company's  books  (which  per- 
haps differed  from  the  balance  of  last  year  in  the  sum  of  251.  Is.  6d.) 
occupied  his  days  and  nights  for  a  month  previous.  Not  that  Tipp 
was  blind  to  the  deadness  of  thinffs  (as  they  call  them  in  the  City) 
in  his  beloved  house,  or  did  not  sigh  for  a  return  of  the  old  stirring 
days  when  South  Sea  hopes  were  young  (he  was  indeed  equal  to  the 
wielding  of  any  the  most  intricate  accounts  of  the  most  flourishing 
company  in  these  or  those  days) :  but  to  a  genuine  accountant  the 
difference  of  proceeds  is  as  nothing.  The  fractional  farthing  is  as 
dear  to  his  heart  as  the  thousands  which  stand  before  it.  He  is  the 
true  actor  who,  whether  his  part  be  a  prince  or  a  peasant,  must  act 
it  with  like  intensity.  With  Tipp,  form  was  everything.  His  life  was 
formal.  His  actions  seemed  ruled  with  a  ruler.  His  pen  was  not 
less  erring  than  his  heart.  He  made  the  best  executor  in  the  world ; 
he  was  plagued  with  incessaut  executorships  accordingly,  which  ex- 


m  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chat. 

cited  his  spleen  and  soothed  his  vanity  in  equal  ratios.  He  would 
swear  (for  Tipp  swore)  at  the  little  orphans,  whose  rights  he  would 
guard  with  a  tenacity  like  the  grasp  of  the  dying  hand  that  com- 
mended their  interests  to  his  protection.  With  all  this  there  was 
about  him  a  sort  of  timidity — his  few  enemies  used  to  give  it  a  worse 
name — a  something  which,  in  reverence  to  the  dead,  we  will  place, 
if  you  please,  a  httle  on  this  side  of  the  heroic.  Nature  certainly 
had  been  pleased  to  endow  John  Tipp  with  a  suflBcient  measure  of 
the  principle  of  self-preservation.  There  is  a  cowardice  which  we 
do  not  despise,  because  it  has  nothing  base  or  treacherous  in  its 
elements ;  it  betrays  itself,  not  you ;  it  is  mere  temperament ;  the  ab- 
sence of  the  romantic  and  the  enterprising ;  it  sees  a  lion  in  the  way, 
and  will  not,  with  Fortinbras,  *  greatly  find  quarrel  in  a  straw,'  when 
some  supposed  honour  is  at  stake.  Tipp  never  mounted  the  box  of 
a  stage  coach  in  his  life,  or  leaned  against  the  rails  of  a  balcony,  or 
walked  upon  the  ridge  of  a  parapet,  or  looked  down  a  precipice,  or 
let  off  a  gun,  or  went  upon  a  water-party,  or  would  willingly  let  you 
go  if  he  could  have  helped  it ;  neither  was  it  recorded  of  him  that 
for  lucre,  or  for  intimidation,  he  ever  forsook  friend  or  principle." 

Two  of  the  essays  have  attained  a  celebrity,  certainly 
not  out  of  proportion  to  their  merits,  but  serving  to  make 
quotation  from  them  almost  an  impertinence.  These  are 
the  Dissertation  on  Roast  Pig,  Lamb's  version  of  a  story 
told  him  by  his  friend  Manning  (though  not  probably  to 
be  found  in  any  Chinese  manuscript),  and  the  essay,  final- 
ly called  Imperfect  Sympathies,  but  originally  bearing  the 
cumbrous  title  of  Jews,  Quakers,  Scotchmen,  and  other 
Imperfect  Sympathies.  It  is  here  that  occurs  the  famous 
analysis  of  the  Scotch  character,  perhaps  the  cleverest  pas- 
sage, in  its  union  of  fine  observation  and  felicity  of  phrase, 
in  the  whole  of  Lamb's  writings.  The  anecdote  of  Lamb's 
favourite  picture — his  "  beauty  " — the  Leonardo  da  Vinci, 
and  that  of  the  party  where  the  son  of  Burns  was  expect- 
ed, together  with  the  complaint  that  follows  of  the  hope- 
lessness of  satisfying  a  Scotchman  in  the  matter  of  the 


vl]  the  essays  of  ELU.  108 

appreciation  of  that  poet,  have  become  as  mtlch  common- 
places of  quotation  as  Sydney  Smith's  famous  reference 
to  the  surgical  operation.  The  brilliancy  of  the  whole 
passage  has  rather  thrown  into  the  shade  the  disquisition 
on  Quaker  manners  that  follows,  and  the  story  he  had 
heard  from  Carlisle,  the  surgeon,  of  the  three  Quakers  who 
"  stopped  to  bait "  at  Andover.  But  the  whole  paper  is 
excellent. 

Hardly  less  familiar  is  the  account  of  old  Mrs.  Battle, 
and  her  opinions  upon  the  game  of  whist.  "  *  A  clear  fire, 
a  clean  hearth,  and  the  rigour  of  the  game.'  This  was  the 
celebrated  wish  of  old  Sarah  Battle  (now  with  God)  who 
next  to  her  devotions  loved  a  good  game  at  whist.  She 
was  none  of  your  lukewarm  gamesters,  your  half-and-half 
players,  who  have  no  objection  to  take  a  hand  if  you  want 
one  to  make  up  a  rubber ;  who  aflSrm  that  they  have  no 
pleasure  in  winning,  that  they  like  to  win  one  game  and 
lose  another,  that  they  can  while  away  an  hour  very 
agreeably  at  a  card-table,  but  are  indifferent  whether  they 
play  or  no,  and  will  desire  an  adversary  who  has  slipped  a 
wrong  card  to  take  it  up  and  play  another.  These  insuf- 
ferable triflers  are  the  curse  of  a  table ;  one  of  these  flies 
will  spoil  a  whole  pot.  Of  such  it  may  be  said  that  they 
do  not  play  at  cards,  but  only  play  at  playing  with  them." 

The  portrait  must  have  been  drawn  in  the  main  from 
life.  One  of  the  most  singular  suggestions  ever  offered 
by  Lamb's  editors  is  that  this  "  gentlewoman  born,"  with 
her  "  fine  last-century  countenance,"  the  niece  of  "  old  Wal- 
ter Plumer,"  was  drawn  from  Lamb's  old  grandmother, 
Mrs.  Field.  As  a  test  of  the  likelihood  of  this  theory 
it  will  be  found  instructive  to  read,  after  this  essay,  the 
touching  lines  already  cited  called  The  Grandame. 

The  marked  peculiarities  of  Lamb's  style  give  so  unique 
xl 


104  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

a  colouring  to  all  these  essays  that  one  is  apt  to  overlook 
to  what  a  variety  of  themes  it  is  found  suitable.  There 
is  no  mood,  from  that  of  almost  reckless  merriment  to 
that  of  pathetic  sweetness  or  religious  awe,  to  which  the 
style  is  not  able  to  modulate  with  no  felt  sense  of  incon- 
gruity. A  feature  of  Lamb's  method,  as  we  have  seen,  is 
his  use  of  quotations.  Not  only  are  they  brought  in  so 
as  really  to  illustrate,  but  the  passages  cited  themselves  re- 
ceive illustration  from  the  use  made  of  them,  and  gain  a 
permanent  and  heightened  value  from  it.  Whether  it  be 
a  garden-scene  from  Marvell,  a  solemn  paradox  from  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  or  a  stanza  from  some  then  recent  poem 
of  Wordsworth,  the  quotation  fulfils  a  double  purpose, 
and  has  sent  many  a  reader  to  explore  for  himself  in  the 
author  whose  words  strike  him  with  such  luminous  eflEect 
in  their  new  setting.  Take,  for  example,  the  Miltonic 
digression  in  the  essay  on  Grace  before  Meat.  Lamb  is 
never  more  happy  than  in  quoting  from  or  discoursing  on 
Milton : 

"  The  severest  satire  upon  fall  tables  and  surfeits  is  the  banquet 
which  Satan,  in  the  Paradise  Regained,  provides  for  a  temptation  in 
the  wilderness : 

" '  A  table  richly  spread  in  regal  modes 

With  dishes  piled  and  meats  of  noblest  sort 
And  savour ;  beasts  of  chase,  or  fowl  of  game, 
In  pastry  built,  or  from  the  spit,  or  boiled 
Gris-amber-steamed ;  all  fish  from  sea  or  shore, 
Freshet  or  purling  brook,  for  which  was  drained 
Pontus,  and  Lucrine  bay,  and  Afric  coast.' 

The  tempter,  I  warrant  you,  thought  these  cates  would  go  down 
without  the  recommendatory  preface  of  a  benediction.  They  are 
like  to  be  short  graces  where  the  devil  plays  the  host.  I  am  afraid 
the  poet  wants  his  usual  decorum  in  this  place.  Was  he  thinking  of 
the  old  Soman  luxury,  or  of  a  gaudy  day  at  Cambridge  ?    This  was 


Tt]  THE  ESSAYS  OP  ELIA.  106 

a  temptation  fitter  for  a  Heliogabalus.  The  whole  banquet  is  too 
civic  and  culinary ;  and  the  accompaniments  altogether  a  profanation 
of  that  deep,  abstracted,  holy  scene.  The  mighty  artillery  of  sauces 
which  the  cook-fiend  conjures  up,  is  out  of  proportion  to  the  simple 
wants  and  plain  hunger  of  the  guest.  He  that  disturbed  him  in  his 
dreams,  from  his  dreams  might  have  been  taught  better.  To  the 
temperate  fantasies  of  the  famished  Son  of  God  what  sort  of  feasta 
presented  themselves  ?    He  dreamed  indeed — 

"  'As  appetite  is  wont  to  dream 
Of  meats  and  drinks,  nature's  refreshment  sweet.* 

But  what  meats  ? 

" '  Him  thought,  he  by  the  brook  of  Cherith  stood, 
And  saw  the  ravens  with  their  homy  beaks 
Food  to  Elijah  bringing  even  and  mom : 
Though  ravenous,  taught  to  abstain  from  what  they  brought. 
He  saw  the  prophet  also  how  he  fled 
Into  the  desert,  and  how  there  he  slept 
Under  a  juniper :  then  how  awaked 
He  found  his  supper  on  the  coals  prepared, 
And  by  the  angel  was  bid  rise  and  eat, 
And  ate  the  second  time  after  repose. 
The  strength  whereof  sufficed  him  forty  days : 
Sometimes,  that  with  Elijah  he  partook 
Or  as  a  guest  with  Daniel  at  his  pulse.' 

Nothing  in  Milton  is  finelier  fancied  than  these  temperate  dreama 
of  the  divine  Hungerer.  To  which  of  these  two  visionary  banquets, 
think  you,  would  the  introduction  of  what  is  called  the  grace  have 
been  most  fitting  and  pertinent  ?" 

"  I  am  no  Quaker  at  my  food."  So  Lamb  characteris- 
tically proceeds,  after  one  short  paragraph  interposed.  "  I 
confess  I  am  not  indifferent  to  the  kinds  of  it.  Those 
unctuous  morsels  of  deer's  flesh  were  not  made  to  be  re 
ceived  with  dispassionate  services.  I  hate  a  man  who 
swallows  it,  affecting  not  to  know  what  he  is  eating;  I 

suspect  his  taste  in  higher  matters.     I  shrink  instinctively 
21 


IM  OHAHLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

from  one  who  professes  to  like  minced  veal.     There  is  a 

physiognomical  character  in  the  tastes  for  food.     C 

holds  that  a  man  cannot  have  a  pure  mind  who  refuses 
apple-dumplings.     I  am  not  certain  but  he  is  right." 

And  so  he  rambles  on  in  almost  endless  digression  and 
absolute  fearlessness  as  to  egotism  of  such  a  kind  ever 
palling  or  annoying.  This  egotism — it  is  almost  superflu- 
ous to  mark — is  a  dominant  characteristic  of  Lamb's  man- 
ner. The  prominence  of  the  personal  element  had  indeed 
been  a  feature  of  the  essay  proper  ever  since  Montaigne, 
its  first  inventor.  But  Lamb's  use  of  the  "  I "  has  little 
resemblance  to  the  gossiping  confessions  of  the  Gascon 
gentleman.  These  grave  avowals  as  to  the  minced  veal 
and  the  dumplings  are  not  of  the  same  order  as  Mon- 
taigne's confidences  as  to  his  preference  of  white  wine  to 
red.  The  "  I "  of  Lamb  in  such  a  case  is  no  concession  to 
an  idle  curiosity,  nor  is  it  in  fact  biographical  at  all.  Nor 
is  it  the  egotism  of  Steele  and  Addison,  though,  when  oc- 
casion arises,  Lamb  shows  signs  of  the  influence  upon  him 
of  these  earlier  masters  in  his  own  special  school.  He 
thus  begins,  for  instance,  his  paper  called  The  Wedding : 
"I  do  not  know  when  I  have  been  better  pleased  than  at 
being  invited  last  week  to  be  present  at  the  wedding  of  a 
friend's  daughter.  I  like  to  make  one  at  these  ceremonies, 
which  to  us  old  people  give  back  our  youth  in  a  manner, 
and  restore  our  gayest  season,  in  the  remembrance  of  our 
own  success,  or  the  regrets  scarcely  less  tender,  of  our  own 
youthful  disappointments,  in  this  point  of  a  settlement. 
On  these  occasions  I  am  sure  to  be  in  good-humour  for  a 
week  or  two  after,  and  enjoy  a  reflected  honeymoon."  In 
matter,  language,  and  cadence  this  might  have  been  taken 
bodily  from  the  Spectator.  Yet  this  was  no  freak  of  imi- 
tation on  Lamb's  part.     It  merely  arose  from  the  subject 


Ti.]  THE  ESSAYS  OF  RLIA.  lOY 

and  the  train  of  thought  engendered  by  it  being  of  that 
domestic  kind  which  Richard  Steele  loved  so  well  to  dis- 
course on.  Lamb's  mind  and  memory  were  so  stored  with 
English  reading  of  an  older  date,  that  the  occurrence  of  a 
particular  theme  sends  him  back,  quite  naturally,  to  those 
early  masters  who  had  specially  made  that  theme  their 
own.  For  all  his  strongly-marked  individuality  of  manner, 
there  are  perhaps  few  English  writers  who  have  written  so 
differently  upon  different  themes.  When  he  chose  to  be 
fanciful,  he  could  be  as  euphuistic  as  Donne  or  Burton — 
when  he  was  led  to  be  grave  and  didactic,  he  could  write 
with  the  sententiousness  of  Bacon — when  his  imagination 
and  feeling  together  lifted  him  above  thoughts  of  style, 
his  English  cleared  and  soared  into  regions  not  far  below 
the  noblest  flights  of  Milton  and  Jeremy  Taylor.  When 
on  the  other  hand  he  was  at  home,  on  homely  themes,  he 
wrote  "  like  a  man  of  this  world,"  and  of  his  own  century 
and  year. 

Still  it  must  be  said  that  his  style  is  in  the  main  an 
eclectic  English.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  this  implies 
no  affectation.  No  man  ever  wrote  to  such  purpose  in  a 
style  deliberately  assumed.  Hazlitt  remarks  of  him,  that 
"  he  is  so  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  his  au- 
thors, that  the  idea  of  imitation  is  almost  done  way. 
There  is  an  inward  unction,  a  marrowy  vein  both  in  the 
thought  and  feeling,  an  intuition,  deep  and  ,  lively,  of  his 
subject  that  carries  off  any  quaintness  or  awkwardness 
arising  from  an  antiquated  style  and  dress."  This  is  quite 
true,  and  Hazlitt  might  have  added  that  in  the  rare  in- 
stances when  Lamb  used  this  old-fashioned  manner,  with- 
out the  deeper  thought  or  finer  observation  to  elevate  it, 
the  manner  alone,  whimsical  and  ingenious  as  it  is,  be- 
comes a  trifle  wearisome.     The  euphuistic  ingenuity  of 


108  CHABLES  LAMB.  [oHir. 

All  Fools'  Day  is  not  a  pleasing  sample  of  Lamb's  fac- 
ulty. 

His  friend  Bernard  Barton  wrote  of  him  in  a  sonnet: 

"  From  the  olden  time 
Of  authorship,  thy  patent  should  be  dated, 
And  thou  with  Marvell,  Browne,  and  Burton  mated." 

This  trio  of  authors  is  well  chosen.  There  is  no  poet  he 
loves  better  to  quote  than  Marvell,  and  none  with  whose 
poetic  vein  his  own  is  more  in  sympathy.  Lamb  received 
his  impressions  from  nature  (unless  it  was  in  Hertford- 
shire) largely  through  the  medium  of  books,  and  he  makes 
it  clear  that  old-fashioned  garden-scenes  come  to  him  first 
with  their  peculiar  charm  when  he  meets  with  them  in 
Milton  or  Marvell.  But  the  second  name  cited  by  Barton 
is  the  most  important  of  all  among  the  influences  on 
Lamb's  style  and  the  cast  of  his  thought.  Of  all  old 
writers,  the  author  of  the  Urn  Burial  and  the  Religio 
Medici  appears  oftenest,  in  quotation  or  allusion,  in  the 
Essays  of  Elia.  Lamb  somewhere  boasts  that  he  first 
"  among  the  moderns "  discovered  and  proclaimed  his  ex- 
cellences. And  though  Lamb  never  (so  far  as  I  can  dis- 
cover) caught  the  special  rhythm  of  Browne's  sentences, 
it  is  from  him  that  he  adopted  the  constant  habit,  just  re- 
ferred to,  of  asserting  his  opinions,  feelings,  and  specula- 
tions in  the  first  person.  Different  as  are  the  two  men  in 
other  regards.  Lamb's  egotism  is  largely  the  egotism  of 
Sir  Thomas  Browne.  From  Browne  too  he  probably 
caught  a  certain  habit  of  gloomy  paradox,  in  dwelling  on 
the  mysteries  of  the  supernatural  world.  His  sombre 
musings  upon  death  in  the  essay  called  New  Year's  Eve 
bear  the  strong  impress  of  Browne,  notwithstanding  that 
they  are  antagonistic  (perhaps  consciously)  to  a  remark- 


▼1.J  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA.  109 

able  passage  in  the  Religio  Medici.  And  even  in  his 
lighter  vein  of  speculation,  Lamb's  persistent  use  of  the 
first  person  often  reads  as  if  he  were  humorously  parody- 
ing the  same  original. 

A  large  portion  of  Lamb's  history  is  related  in  these 
essays,  and  with  the  addition  of  a  few  names  and  dates, 
a  complete  biography  might  be  constructed  from  them 
alone.  As  we  have  seen,  he  tells  of  his  childish  thoughts 
and  feelings,  of  his  school-days,  his  home  in  the  Temple, 
the  Hertfordshire  village  where  he  passed  his  holidays  as 
a  boy,  and  the  university  towns  where  he  loved  to  spend 
them  in  manhood.  He  has  drawn  most  detailed  portraits 
of  his  grandmother,  his  father,  sister,  and  brother,  and 
would  no  doubt  have  added  that  of  his  mother,  but  for 
the  painful  memories  it  would  have  brought  to  Mary. 
Of  the  incidents  in  the  happier  days  of  his  life,  when 
Mary  was  in  good  health,  and  the  daily  sharer  in  all  in- 
terests and  pleasures,  he  has  written  with  a  special  charm. 
There  is  a  passage  in  the  essay  called  Old  China  without 
which  any  picture  of  their  united  life  would  be  incom- 
plete. The  essay  had  begun  by  declaring  Lamb's  partial- 
ity for  old  china,  from  which  after  a  few  paragraphs  he 
diverges,  by  a  modulation  common  with  him,  to  the  recol- 
lection of  his  past  struggles.  He  had  been  taking  tea,  he 
says,  with  his  cousin  (under  this  relationship  his  sister 
Mary  is  always  indicated),  using  a  new  set  of  china,  and 
remarking  to  her  on  their  better  fortunes  which  enabled 
them  to  indulge  now  and  again  in  the  luxury  of  such  a 
purchase,  "  when  a  passing  sentiment  seemed  to  overshade 
the  brows  of  my  companion.  I  am  quick  at  detecting 
these  summer  clouds  in  Bridget. 

"*I  wish  the  good  old  times  would  come  again,'  she 
said,  *  when  we  were  not  quite  so  rich.     I  do  not  mean 


no  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

that  I  want  to  be  poor,  but  there  was  a  middle  state,'  so 
she  was  pleased  to  ramble  on,  *in  which  I  am  sure  we 
were  a  great  deal  happier.  A  purchase  is  but  a  purchase, 
now  that  you  have  money  enough  and  to  spare.  Former- 
ly it  used  to  be  a  triumph.  When  we  coveted  a  cheap 
luxury  (and  0 !  how  much  ado  I  had  to  get  you  to  con- 
sent in  those  days !)  we  were  used  to  have  a  debate  two  or 
three  days  before,  and  to  weigh  the /or  and  against,  and 
think  what  we  might  spare  it  out  of,  and  what  saving  we 
could  hit  upon  that  should  be  an  equivalent.  A  thing 
was  worth  buying  then,  when  we  felt  the  money  that  we 
paid  for  it. 

"  *  Do  you  remember  the  brown  suit  which  you  made  to 
hang  upon  you,  till  all  your  friends  cried  shame  upon  you, 
it  grew  so  threadbare,  and  all  because  of  that  folio  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  which  you  dragged  home  late  at  night 
from  Barker's  in  Covent  Garden  ?  Do  you  remember  how 
we  eyed  it  for  weeks  before  we  could  make  up  our  minds 
to  the  purchase,  and  had  not  come  to  a  determination  till 
it  was  near  ten  o'clock  of  the  Saturday  night,  when  you 
set  off  from  Islington  fearing  you  should  be  too  late — and 
when  the  old  bookseller,  with  some  grumbling  opened  his 
shop,  and  by  the  twinkling  taper  (for  he  was  setting  bed- 
wards),  lighted  out  the  relic  from  his  dusty  treasures,  and 
when  you  lugged  it  home,  wishing  it  were  twice  as  cum- 
bersome, and  when  you  presented  it  to  me,  and  when  we 
were  exploring  the  perfectness  of  it  {collating,  you  called 
it),  and  while  I  was  repairing  some  of  the  loose  leaves 
with  paste,  which  your  impatience  would  not  suffer  to  be 
left  till  daybreak — was  there  no  pleasure  in  being  a  poor 
man?  or  can  those  neat  black  clothes  which  you  wear 
now,  and  are  so  careful  to  keep  brushed,  since  we  have 
become  rich  and  finical,  give  you  half  the  honest  vanity 


Ti.]  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA.  Ill 

with  which  you  flaunted  it  about  in  that  over-worn  suit 
— your  old  corbeau — for  four  or  five  weeks  longer  than 
you  should  have  done,  to  pacify  your  conscience  for  the 
mighty  sum  of  fifteen  or  sixteen  shillings,  was  it  ? — a  great 
affair  we  thought  it  then — which  you  had  lavished  on  the 
old  folio?  Now  you  can  afford  to  buy  any  book  that 
pleases  you,  but  I  do  not  see  that  you  ever  bring  me  home 
any  nice  old  purchases  now.' " 

The  essay  "  Blakesmoor  in  H shire  "  has  been  more 

than  once  referred  to,  in  connexion  with  Lamb's  old  grand- 
mother, Mrs.  Field.  The  essay  acquires  a  new  interest 
when  it  is  known  how  much  of  fact  is  contained  in  it. 
William  Plumer,  who  represented  his  county  in  parlia- 
ment for  so  many  years,  and  was  at  the  time  of  his  death, 
in  1822,  member  for  Higham  Ferrers,  left  his  estates  at 
Gilston  and  Blakesware  to  his  widow,  apparently  with  the 
understanding  that  the  old  Blakesware  mansion  should  be 
pulled  down.  Accordingly  not  long  before  the  date  of 
Lamb's  essay  (September,  1824)  it  had  been  levelled  to 
the  ground  j  and  some  of  the  more  valuable  of  its  con- 
tents, including  the  busts  of  the  Twelve  Caesars,  so  often 
dwelt  on  by  Lamb  in  letter  or  essay,  removed  to  the  other 
house  at  Gilston.  Under  its  roof,  and  among  its  gardens 
and  terraces.  Lamb's  happiest  days  as  a  child  had  been 
spent,  and  he  had  just  been  to  look  once  more  on  the  few 
vestiges  still  remaining : 

"I  do  not  know  a  pleasure  more  affecting  than  to  range  at  will 
over  the  deserted  apartments  of  some  fine  old  family  mansion.  The 
traces  of  extinct  grandeur  admit  of  a  better  passion  than  envy ;  and 
contemplations  on  the  great  and  good,  whom  we  fancy  in  succession 
to  have  been  its  inhabitants,  weave  for  us  illusions  incompatible  with 
the  bustle  of  modem  occupancy,  and  vanities  of  fooUsh  present  aris- 
tocracy.   The  same  difference  of  feeling,  I  think,  attends  us  between 


112  CHARLES  LAMB.  [cbat. 

entering  an  empty  and  a  crowded  church.  In  the  latter  it  is  chance 
but  some  present  human  frailty — an  act  of  inattention  on  the  part  of 
some  of  the  auditory,  or  a  trait  of  affectation,  or  worse,  vainglory,  on 
that  of  the  preacher — puts  us  by  our  best  thoughts,  disharmonizing 
the  place  and  the  occasion-  But  would'st  thou  know  the  beauty  of 
holiness  ?  Gk)  alone  on  some  week-day,  borrowing  the  keys  of  good 
Master  Sexton,  traverse  the  cool  aisles  of  some  country  church ;  think 
of  the  piety  that  has  kneeled  there — the  congregations,  old  and  young, 
that  have  found  consolation  there — the  meek  pastor,  the  docile  pa- 
rishioner. With  no  disturbing  emotions,  no  cross,  conflicting  com- 
parisons, drink  in  the  tranquillity  of  the  place,  till  thou  thyself  be- 
come as  fixed  and  motionless  as  the  marble  effigies  that  kneel  and 
weep  around  thee. 

"  Journeying  northward  lately,  I  could  not  resist  going  some  few 
miles  out  of  my  road  to  look  upon  the  remains  of  an  old  great  house 
with  which  I  had  been  impressed  in  this  way  in  infancy.  I  was 
apprised  that  the  owner  of  it  had  lately  pulled  it  down ;  still  I  had  a 
vague  notion  that  it  could  not  all  have  perished,  that  so  much  solid- 
ity with  magnificence  could  not  have  been  crushed  all  at  once  into 
the  mere  dust  and  rubbish  which  I  found  it. 

"  The  work  of  ruin  had  proceeded  with  a  swift  hand  indeed,  and 
the  demolition  of  a  few  weeks  had  reduced  it  to  an  antiquity. 

"I  was  astonished  at  the  indistinction  of  everything.  Where  had 
stood  the  great  gates?  What  bounded  the  court -yard?  Where- 
about did  the  out-houses  commence  ?  A  few  bricks  only  lay  as  rep- 
resentatives of  that  which  was  so  stately  and  so  spacious. 

"Death  does  not  shrink  up  his  human  victim  at  this  rate.  The 
burnt  ashes  of  a  man  weigh  more  in  their  proportion. 

"  Had  I  seen  these  brick  and  mortar  knaves  at  their  process  of  de- 
struction, at  the  plucking  of  every  panel  I  should  have  felt  the  var- 
lets  at  my  heart.  I  should  have  cried  out  to  them  to  spare  a  plank 
at  least  out  of  the  cheerful  store-room,  in  whose  hot  window-seat  I 
used  to  sit  and  read  Cowley,  with  the  grass-plot  before,  and  the  hum 
and  flappings  of  that  one  solitary  wasp  that  ever  haunted  it  about 
me — it  is  in  mine  ears  now,  as  oft  as  summer  returns ;  or  a  panel  of 
the  yellow  room. 

"  Why,  every  plank  and  panel  of  that  house  for  me  had  magic  in 
it.  The  tapestried  bedrooms — tapestry  so  much  better  than  paint- 
ing— not  adorning  merely — but  peopling  the  wainscots — at  which 


▼I.]  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA.  118 

childhood  ever  and  anon  would  steal  a  look,  shifting  its  coverlid  (re» 
placed  as  quickly)  to  exercise  its  tender  courage  in  a  momentary  eye- 
encounter  with  those  stem  bright  visages,  staring  reciprocally — all 
Ovid  on  the  walls — in  colours  vivider  than  his  descriptions.  Actseon 
in  mid  sprout,  with  the  unappeasable  prudery  of  Diana ;  and  the  still 
more  provoking  and  almost  culinary  coolness  of  Dan  Phoebus,  eel» 
fashion,  deliberately  divesting  of  Marsyas. 

"  Then  that  haunted  room — in  which  old  Mrs.  Battle  died — ^where- 
into  I  have  crept,  but  always  in  the  daytime,  with  a  passion  of  fear ; 
and  a  sneaking  curiosity,  terror-tainted,  to  hold  communication  with 
the  past. — How  shall  they  build  it  up  again  ? 

"  It  was  an  old  deserted  place,  yet  not  so  long  deserted  but  that 
traces  of  the  splendour  of  past  inmates  were  everywhere  apparent. 
Its  furniture  was  still  standing,  even  to  the  tarnished  gilt -leather 
battledores  and  crumbling  feathers  of  shuttlecocks  in  the  nursery, 
which  told  that  children  had  once  played  there.  But  I  was  a  lonely 
child,  and  had  the  range  at  will  of  every  apartment,  knew  every  nook 
and  corner,  wondered  and  worshipped  everywhere.  The  solitude  of 
childhood  is  not  so  much  the  mother  of  thought,  as  it  is  the  feeder  of 
love,  and  silence,  and  admiration.  So  strange  a  passion  for  the  place 
possessed  me  in  those  years,  that  though  there  lay — I  shame  to  say 
how  few  roods  distant  from  the  mansion — half  hid  by  trees,  wfiat  I 
judged  some  romantic  lake,  such  was  the  spell  which  bound  me  to 
the  house,  and  such  my  carefulness  not  to  pass  its  strict  and  proper 
precincts,  that  the  idle  waters  lay  unexplored  for  me ;  and  not  till 
late  in  life,  curiosity  prevailing  over  elder  devotion,  I  found,  to  my 
astonishment,  a  pretty  brawling  brook  had  been  the  Lacus  Incognitus 
of  my  infancy.  Variegated  views,  extensive  prospects — and  those  at 
no  great  distance  from  the  house — I  was  told  of  such — what  were 
they  to  me,  being  out  of  the  boundaries  of  my  Eden  ?  So  far  from  a 
wish  to  roam,  I  would  have  drawn,  methought,  still  closer  the  fences 
of  my  chosen  prison ;  and  have  been  hemmed  in  by  a  yet  securer 
cincture  of  those  excluding  garden  wails.  I  could  have  exclaimed 
with  that  garden-loving  poet — 

"  *  Bind  me,  ye  woodbines,  in  your  twines; 
Curl  me  about,  ye  gadding  vines ; 
And  oh  so  close  your  circles  lac«, 
That  I  may  never  leave  this  place: 


114  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

But  lest  your  fetters  prove  too  weak, 
Ere  I  your  silken  bondage  break, 
Do  you,  0  brambles,  chain  me  too, 
And,  courteous  briars,  nail  me  through." 

I  was  here  as  in  a  lonely  temple.  Snug  firesides,  the  low-built  rool^ 
parlours  ten  feet  by  ten,  frugal  boards,  and  all  the  homeliness  of  homo 
— these  were  the  condition  of  my  birth — the  wholesome  soil  which  I 
was  planted  in. 

"  Yet,  without  impeachment  to  their  tenderest  lessons,  I  am  not 
sorry  to  have  had  glances  of  something  beyond ;  and  to  have  taken, 
if  but  a  peep,  in  childhood,  at  the  contrasting  accidents  of  a  great 
fortune." 

In  this  essay,  save  for  the  change  of  Blakesware  to 
Blakesmoor,  the  experience  is  related  without  disguise. 
Bnt  it  is  not  always  easy  to  disengage  fact  from  fiction 
in  these  more  personal  confessions.  Lamb  had  a  love  of 
mystifying  and  putting  his  readers  on  a  false  scent.  And 
the  difficulty  of  getting  at  the  truth  is  the  greater  because 
he  is  often  most  outspoken  when  we  should  expect  him 
to  be  reticent,  and  on  the  other  hand  alters  names  and 
places  when  there  would  seem  to  be  little  reason  for  it.  A 
curious  instance  of  this  habit  is  supplied  by  the  touching 
reverie  called  Dream  Children.  This  essay  appeared  in 
the  London  for  January,  1822.  Lamb's  elder  brother  John 
was  then  lately  dead.  A  letter  to  Wordsworth,  of  March 
in  this  year,  mentions  his  death  as  recent,  and  speaks  of  a 
certain  "  deadness  to  everything,"  which  the  writer  dated 
from  that  event.  The  "  broad,  burly,  jovial "  John  Lamb 
(so  Talfourd  describes  him)  had  lived  his  own,  easy,  pros- 
perous life  up  to  this  time,  not  altogether  avoiding  social 
relations  with  his  brother  and  sister,  but  evidently  absorbed 
to  the  last  in  his  own  interests  and  pleasures.  The  death 
of  this  brother,  wholly  unsympathetic  as  he  was  with 
'  Marvell  on  Appleton  House,  to  the  Lord  Fairfax. 


▼tj  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELU.  116 

Charles,  served  to  bring  home  to  him  his  loneliness.  He 
was  left  in  the  world  with  but  one  near  relation,  and  that 
one  too  often  removed  from  him  for  months  at  a  time  by 
the  saddest  of  afflictions.  No  wonder  if  he  became  keenly 
aware  of  his  solitude.  No  wonder  if  his  thoughts  turned 
to  what  might  have  been,  and  he  looked  back  to  those 
boyish  days  when  he  wandered  in  the  glades  of  Blakes- 
ware  with  Alice  by  his  side.  He  imagines  himself  with 
his  little  ones,  who  have  crept  round  him  to  hear  stories 
about  their  "great -grandmother  Field."  For  no  reason 
that  is  apparent,  while  he  retains  his  grandmother's  real 
name,  he  places  the  house  in  Norfolk,  but  all  the  details 
that  follow  are  drawn  from  Blakesware.  "Then  I  went 
on  to  say  how  religious  and  how  good  their  great-grand- 
mother Field  was,  how  beloved  and  respected  by  every- 
body, though  she  was  not  indeed  the  mistress  of  this  great 
house,  but  had  only  the  charge  of  it  (and  yet  in  some  re- 
spects she  might  be  said  to  be  the  mistress  of  it  too)  com- 
mitted to  her  by  its  owner,  who  preferred  living  in  a  newer 
and  more  fashionable  mansion  which  he  had  purchased 
somewhere  in  an  adjoining  county;*  but  still  she  lived  in 
it  in  a  manner  as  if  it  had  been  her  own,  and  kept  up  the 
dignity  of  the  great  house  in  a  sort  while  fehe  lived,  which  af- 
terwards came  to  decay,  and  was  nearly  pulled  down,  and  all 
its  old  ornaments  stripped  and  carried  away  to  the  owner's 
other  house,  where  they  were  set  up,  and  looked  as  awk- 
ward as  if  some  one  were  to  carry  away  the  old  tombs  they 
had  seen  lately  at  the  abbey  and  stick  them  up  in  Lady 
C.'s  tawdry  gilt  drawing-room.  Here  John  smiled,  as  much 
as  to  say,  *  That  would  be  foolish  indeed.' " 

Inexpressibly  touching,  when  we  have  once  learned  to 
penetrate  the  thin  disguise  in  which  he  clothes  them,  are 

'  This  is,  of  course,  Gilston,  the  other  seat  of  the  Plumer  family. 


Ill  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

the  hoarded  memories,  the  tender  regrets,  which  Lamb, 
writing  by  his  "  lonely  hearth,"  thus  ventured  to  commit 
to  the  uncertain  sympathies  of  the  great  public.  More 
touching  still  is  the  almost  superhuman  sweetness  with 
which  he  deals  with  the  character  of  his  lately  lost  broth- 
er. He  had  named  his  little  ones  after  this  brother,  and 
after  their  "  pretty  dead  mother  " — John  and  Alice.  And 
there  is  something  of  the  magic  of  genius,  unless,  indeed, 
it  was  a  burst  of  uncontrollable  anguish,  in  the  revelation 
with  which  his  dream  ends.  He  kept  still,  as  always,  the 
secret  of  his  beloved's  name.  But  he  tells  us  who  it  was 
that  won  the  prize  from  him,  and  it  is  no  secret  that  in 
this  case  the  real  name  is  given.  The  conclusion  of  this 
essay  must  be  oar  last  extract,  but  it  would  be  difiScult  to 
find  one  more  worthy : 

"  Then  in  somewhat  a  more  heightened  tone,  I  told  how,  though 
their  great-grandmother  Field  loved  all  her  grandchildren,  yet  in  an 

especial  manner  she  might  be  said  to  love  their  uncle,  John  L , 

because  he  was  so  handsome  and  spirited  a  youth,  and  a  king  to  the 
rest  of  us ;  and  instead  of  moping  about  in  solitary  comers,  like  some 
of  us,  he  would  mount  the  most  mettlesome  horse  he  could  get,  when 
but  an  imp  no  bigger  than  themselves,  and  make  it  carry  him  half 
over  the  county  in  a  morning,  and  join  the  hunters  when  there  were 
any  out ;  and  yet  he  loved  the  old  house  and  gardens  too,  but  had 
too  much  spirit  to  be  always  pent  up  within  their  boundaries;  and 
how  their  uncle  grew  up  to  man's  estate  as  brave  as  he  was  hand- 
some, to  the  admiration  of  everybody,  but  of  their  great-grandmother 
Field  most  especially ;  and  how  he  used  to  carry  me  upon  his  back 
when  I  was  a  lame-footed  boy — for  he  was  a  good  bit  older  than  me 
— many  a  mile  when  I  could  not  walk  for  pain ;  and  how  in  af ter-Ufe 
he  became  lame-footed  too,  and  I  did  not  always  (I  fear)  make  al- 
lowance enough  for  him  when  he  was  impatient  and  in  pain,  nor  re- 
member sufficiently  how  considerate  he  had  been  to  me  when  I  was 
lame-footed ;  and  how  when  he  died,  though  he  had  not  been  dead 
an  hour,  it  seemed  as  if  he  had  died  a  great  while  ago,  such  a  dis- 
tance there  is  betwixt  life  and  death ;  and  how  I  bore  his  death  as  1 


vt]  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELU.  Ill 

thought  pretty  well  at  first,  but  afterwards  it  haunted  and  haunted 
me ;  and  though  I  did  not  cry  or  take  it  to  heart  as  some  do,  and  as 
I  think  he  would  have  done  if  I  had  died,  yet  I  missed  him  all  day 
long,  and  knew  not  till  then  how  much  I  had  loved  him.  I  missed 
his  kindness  and  I  missed  his  crossness,  and  wished  him  to  be  alive 
again  to  be  quarrelling  with  him  (for  we  quarrelled  sometimes),  rath- 
er than  not  have  him  again,  and  was  as  imeasy  without  him  as  he 
their  poor  uncle  must  have  been  when  the  doctor  took  off  his  limb. 
Here  the  children  fell  a-crying,  and  asked  if  their  little  mourning 
which  they  had  on  was  not  for  Uncle  John,  and  they  looked  up  and 
prayed  me  not  to  go  on  about  their  uncle,  but  to  tell  them  some 
stories  about  their  pretty  dead  mother.  Then  I  told  how  for  seven 
long  years,  in  hope  sometimes,  sometimes  in  despair,  yet  persisting 

ever,  I  courted  the  fair  Alice  W n ;  and  as  much  as  children 

could  understand,  I  explained  to  them  what  coyness  and  diflBculty 
and  denial  meant  in  maidens — when  suddenly,  turning  to  Alice,  the 
soul  of  the  first  Alice  looked  out  at  her  eyes  with  such  a  reality  of 
representment,  that  I  became  in  doubt  which  of  them  stood  there 
before  me,  or  whose  that  bright  hair  was ;  and  while  I  stood  gazing, 
both  the  children  gradually  grew  fainter  to  my  view,  receding,  and 
still  receding  till  nothing  at  last  but  two  mournful  features  were 
seen  in  the  uttermost  distance,  which,  without  speech,  strangely  im- 
pressed upon  me  the  effects  of  speech :  '  We  are  not  of  Alice,  nor 
of  thee,  nor  are  we  children  at  all.  The  children  of  Alice  call  Bar- 
tram  father.  We  are  nothing ;  less  than  nothing,  and  dreams.  We 
are  only  what  might  have  been,  and  must  wait  upon  the  tedious 
shores  of  Lethe  milHons  of  ages  before  we  have  existence  and  a 
name' — and  immediately  awaking  I  found  myself  quietly  seated  in 
my  bachelor  arm-chair,  where  I  had  fallen  asleep,  with  the  faithful 
Bridget  unchanged  by  my  side;  but  John  L.  (or  James  Elia)  was 
gone  for  ever." 

The  space  available  for  quotation  is  exhausted,  and 
many  sides  of  Lamb's  peculiar  faculty  are  still  unrepre- 
sented. Those  who  have  yet  to  make  his  acquaintance 
may  be  advised  to  read,  in  addition  to  those  already  named, 
the  essay  On  Some  of  the  Old  Actors,  containing  the  anal- 
ysis of  the  character  of  Malvolio,  a  noble  example  of  the 
6* 


118  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

uses  which  Shatspearian  criticism  may  be  made  to  serve 
— the  extract  from  a  letter  to  his  friend  Barron  Field,  a 
judge  in  New  South  Wales,  entitled  Distant  Correspon- 
dents, and  that  called  The  Praise  of  Chimney  Sweepers. 
Belonging  to  the  personal  group,  which  includes  Blakes- 
moor  and  Dream  Children,  is  the  paper  Max:kery  End  in 
Hertfordshire,  scarcely  less  delightful.  The  two  critical 
essays  on  Sidney  and  Wither  (the  latter,  however,  does 
not  belong  to  the  Elia  series),  contain  some  of  Lamb's 
most  subtle  criticism  and  most  eloquent  writing.  Bar- 
bara S.  is  an  anecdote  of  Fanny  Kelly's  early  life ;  and 
Captain  Jackson  is  a  character-sketch,  which,  despite  the 
vast  difference  between  the  two  writers,  curiously  suggests 
the  fine  hand  of  Miss  Austen.  Lastly,  the  paper  with 
the  startling  title.  Confessions  of  a  Drunkard,  is  not  to 
be  overlooked.  A  strange  interest  attaches  to  this  paper. 
It  had  been  originally  written  by  Lamb,  at  the  request 
of  a  friend,  as  one  of  a  series  of  Temperance  Tracts.  In 
this  capacity  it  had  been  quoted  in  an  article  in  the  Quar- 
terly, for  April,  1822,  as  "a  fearful  picture  of  the  conse- 
quences of  intemperance,"  which  the  reviewer  went  on  to 
say  "  we  have  reason  to  know  is  a  true  tale."  In  order  to 
give  the  author  the  opportunity  of  contradicting  this  state- 
ment, the  tract  was  reprinted  in  the  London  in  the  follow- 
ing August,  under  the  signature  of  Elia.  To  it  were  ap- 
pended a  few  words  of  remonstrance  with  the  Quarterly 
reviewer  for  assuming  the  literal  truthfulness  of  these  con- 
fessions, but  accompanied  with  certain  significant  admis- 
sions that  showed  Lamb  had  no  right  to  be  seriously  in- 
dignant. "It  is  indeed,"  he  writes,  "a  compound  ex- 
tracted out  of  his  long  observations  of  the  effects  of  drink- 
ing upon  all  the  world  about  him ;  and  this  accumulated 
mass  of  misery  he  hath  centred  (as  the  custom  is  with  ja- 


tl]  the  essays  of  ELIA.  119 

dicious  essayists)  in  a  single  figure.  We  deny  not  that  a 
portion  of  his  own  experiences  may  have  passed  into  the 
picture  (as  who,  that  is  not  a  washy  fellow,  but  must  at 
some  time  have  felt  the  after-operation  of  a  too  generous 
cup  ?) ;  but  then  how  heightened !  how  exaggerated !  how 
little  within  the  sense  of  the  Review,  where  a  part,  in  their 
slanderous  usage,  must  be  understood  to  stand  for  the 
whole."  The  truth  is  that  Lamb  in  writing  his  tract  had 
been  playing  with  edge-tools,  and  could  hardly  have  com- 
plained if  they  turned  against  himself.  It  would  be  those 
who  knew  Lamb,  or  at  least  the  circumstances  of  his  life, 
best,  who  would  be  most  likely  to  accept  these  confessions 
as  true.  For  in  the  course  of  them  he  gives  with  curious 
fidelity  the  outline  of  an  experience  that  was  certainly  not 
imaginary.  The  "  friendly  harpies  "  who  came  about  him 
for  his  gin-and-water,  and  made  its  consumption  more  and 
more  a  habit;  the  exchange  of  these  in  due  course  for 
companions  of  a  better  type,  "  of  intrinsic  and  felt  worth;" 
the  substitution  for  a  while,  under  the  influence  of  two  of 
these,  of  the  "  sweet  enemy  "  tobacco,  and  the  new  slavery 
to  this  counter-attraction ;  the  increasing  need  of  stimulant 
to  set  his  wits  to  work,  and  the  buffoonery  indulged  under 
its  effects ;  all  this  is  told  in  a  way  that  no  friend  of  Lamb 
could  affect  to  mistake.  No  doubt  the  exaggeration  which 
Lamb  pleads  is  there  also,  and  the  drunkard's  utter  col- 
lapse and  misery  are  described  in  a  style  which,  as  applied 
to  himself,  was  absurd.  But  to  call  the  insinuation  that 
the  tract  had  in  it  biographic  truth,  "  malignant,"  as  some 
of  Lamb's  apologists  have  done,  is  not  less  absurd.  The 
essay  had  enough  reality  in  it  to  live  as  a  very  powerful 
plea  for  the  virtue  of  self-restraint,  and  it  may  continue 
to  do  good  service  in  the  cause. 

De  Quincey  has  observed  that  one  chief  pleasure  we 
I 


120  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

derive  from  Lamb's  writing  is  due  to  a  secret  satisfaction 
in  feeling  that  his  admirers  must  always  of  necessity  be  a 
select  few.  There  is  an  unpleasantly  cynical  flavour  about 
the  remark,  but  at  the  same  time  one  understands  to  what 
it  points.  Thoroughly  to  understand  and  enjoy  Charles 
Lamb,  one  must  have  come  to  entertain  a  feeling  towards 
him  almost  like  personal  affection,"  and  such  a  circle  of  inti- 
mates will  always  be  small.  It  is  necessary  to  come  to  the 
study  of  his  writings  in  entire  trustfulness,  and  having  first 
cast  away  all  prejudice.  The  reader  must  be  content  to 
enjoy  what  is  set  before  him,  and  not  to  grumble  because 
any  chance  incident  on  the  road  tempts  the  writer  away 
from  the  path  on  which  he  set  out.  If  an  essay  is  head- 
ed Oxford  in  the  Vacation,  he  must  not  complain  that  only 
half  the  paper  touches  on  Oxford,  and  that  the  rest  is  di- 
vided between  the  writer  Elia  and  a  certain  absent-minded 
old  scholar,  George  Dyer,  on  whose  peculiarities  Lamb  was 
never  weary  of  dwelling.  What,  then,  is  the  compensating 
charm  ?  What  is  there  in  these  rambling  and  multifarious 
meditations  that  proves  so  stimulating  and  suggestive  ? 
There  is  an  epithet  commonly  applied  to  Lamb  so  hack- 
neyed that  one  shrinks  from  using  it  once  more — the  epi- 
thet "  delightful."  No  other  word  certainly  seems  more 
appropriate,  and  it  is  perhaps  because  (in  defiance  of  ety- 
mology) the  sound  of  it  suggests  that  double  virtue  of 
illuminating,  and  making  happy.  It  is  in  vain  to  attempt 
to  convey  an  idea  of  the  impression  left  by  Lamb's  style. 
It  evades  analysis.  One  might  as  well  seek  to  account  for 
the  perfume  of  lavender,  or  the  flavour  of  quince.  It  is 
in  truth  an  essence,  prepared  from  flowers  and  herbs  gath- 
ered in  fields  where  the  ordinary  reader  does  not  often 
range.  And  the  nature  of  the  writer — the  alembic  in 
which  these  various  simples  were  distilled — was  as  rare 


VI.]  THE  ESSAYS  OF  ELIA.  121 

for  sweetness  and  purity  as  the  best  of  those  enshrined  in 
the  old  folios — his  "  midnight  darlings."  If  he  had  by 
nature  the  delicate  grace  of  Marvell,  and  the  quaint  fancy 
of  Quarles,  he  also  shared  the  chivalry  of  Sidney,  and  could 
lay  on  himself  "  the  lowliest  duties,"  in  the  spirit  of  his 
best-beloved  of  all,  John  Milton.  It  is  the  man,  Charles 
Lamb,  that  constitutes  the  enduring  charm  of  his  written 
words.  He  is,  as  I  have  said,  an  egotist — but  an  egotist 
without  a  touch  of  vanity  or  self-assertion — an  egotist 
without  a  grain  of  envy  or  ill-nature.  When  asked  one 
day  whether  he  did  not  hate  some  person  under  discus- 
sion, he  retorted,  "  How  could  I  hate  him  ?  Don't  I  know 
him?  I  never  could  hate  any  one  I  knew."  It  is  this 
humanity  that  gives  to  his  intellect  its  flexibility  and  its 
deep  vision,  that  is  the  feeder  at  once  of  bis  pathos  and 
his  humour. 


CHAPTER  VIL 

COLEBROOE     ROW,    ISLINGTON. THE     C0NTR0VBR8T    WITH 

SOUTHET,  AND    RETIREMENT   FROM   THE    INDIA   HOUSK. 

[1823-1826.] 

The  last  six  years  of  Lamb's  life,  though  the  most  re- 
markable in  his  literary  annals,  had  not  been  fruitful  in 
incident.  The  death  of  his  elder  brother,  already  men- 
tioned, was  the  one  event  that  nearly  touched  his  heart 
and  spirits.  Its  effect  had  been,  with  the  loss  of  some 
other  friends  about  the  same  time,  to  produce,  he  said,  "  a 
certain  deadness  to  everything."  It  had  brought  home  to 
him  his  loneliness,  and  moreover  served  to  increase  a  long- 
felt  weariness  of  the  monotony  of  office  life.  Already, 
in  the  beginning  of  1822,  he  was  telling  Wordsworth,  "I 
grow  ominously  tired  of  official  confinement.  Thirty  years 
have  I  served  the  Philistines,  and  my  neck  is  not  subdued 
to  the  yoke.  You  don't  know  how  wearisome  it  is  to 
breathe  the  air  of  four  pent  walls,  without  relief,  day  after 
day,  all  the  golden  hours  of  the  day  between  ten  and 
four,  without  ease  or  interposition.  Tcedet  me  harum 
quotidianarum  formarum,  these  pestilential  clerk-faces  al- 
ways in  one's  dish.  ...  I  dare  not  whisper  to  myself 
a  pension  on  this  side  of  absolute  incapacitation  and  in- 
firmity, till  years  have  sucked  me  dry — otium  cum  indig- 
nitate.     I  had  thought  in    a  green    old  age    (0   green 


CHAP.  VII.]  COLEBROOK  ROW,  ISLINGTON.  128 

thought!)  to  have  retired  to  Ponder's  End,  emblematic 
name,  how  beautiful !  in  the  Ware  Road,  there  to  have 
made  up  my  accounts  with  Heaven  and  the  Company,  tod- 
dling about  it  between  it  and  Cheshunt,  anon  stretching, 
on  some  fine  Izaac  Walton  morning,  to  Hoddesden  or 
Amwell,  careless  as  a  beggar;  but  walking,  walking  ever 
till  I  fairly  walked  myself  off  my  legs,  dying  walking! 
The  hope  is  gone.  I  sit  like  Philomel  all  day  (but  not 
singing)  with  my  heart  against  this  thorn  of  a  desk." 
Very  touching,  by  the  side  of  the  delightful  suggestion  of 
Ponder's  End,  is  the  dream  of  retirement  to  the  Ware 
Road — the  road,  that  is  to  say,  that  led  to  Widford  and 
Blakesware.  If  these  were  not  to  him  exactly  what  Au- 
burn was  to  Goldsmith,  he  still  at  times  had  hopes — 

"  His  long  vexation  past, 
There  to  return,  and  die  at  home  at  last." 

Three  years  were,  however,  to  elapse  before  he  was  at  lib- 
erty to  choose  his  own  place  of  residence.  It  is  signifi- 
cant that  though  he  could  never  bring  himself  to  live 
quite  beyond  reach  of  town,  and  the  "  sweet  security  of 
streets,"  it  was  in  the  Hertfordshire  direction  that  he 
turned  in  his  last  days,  and  died  as  it  were  half-way  be- 
tween London  and  that  quiet  Hertfordshire  village,  the 
two  places  he  loved  best  on  earth. 

There  was  one  incident  in  those  Russell  Street  days 
that  would  have  been  an  event  indeed  in  the  life  of  most 
home-keeping  men  who  had  reached  middle  life  without 
having  once  left  English  shores.  In  the  summer  holiday 
of  1822  Charles  and  his  sister  made  a  trip  to  Paris.  At 
whose  suggestion,  or  in  obedience  to  what  sudden  impulse, 
they  were  led  to  make  so  violent  a  change  in  their  usual 
habits,  there  is  nothing  to  show.     They  left  England  in 


124  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

the  middle  of  June,  and  two  months  later  we  find  Mary 
Lamb  still  in  Paris,  and  seeing  the  sights  under  the  direc- 
tion of  their  friend,  Crabb  Robinson.  Charles,  who  had 
returned  earlier  to  England,  had  left  a  characteristic  note 
of  instructions  for  his  sister's  guidance,  advising  her  to 
walk  along  the  "Borough  side  of  the  Seine,"  where  she 
would  find  a  mile  and  a  half  of  print-shops  and  book- 
stalls. *'  Then,"  he  adds,  not  unfairly  describing  a  first 
impression  of  Pere-la-Chaise,  "  there  is  a  place  where  the 
Paris  people  put  all  their  dead  people,  and  bring  them 
flowers  and  dolls  and  gingerbread -nuts  and  sonnets  and 
such  trifles;  and  that  is  all,  I  think,  worth  seeing  as 
sights,  except  that  the  streets  and  shops  of  Paris  are 
themselves  the  best  sight."  In  a  note  to  Barron  Field  on 
his  return,  he  adds  a  few  more  of  his  experiences,  how 
he  had  eaten  frogs,  fricasseed,  "  the  nicest  little  delicate 
things,"  and  how  the  Seine  was  "  exactly  the  size  to  run 
through  a  magnificent  street." 

He  finds  time,  however,  to  add  to  his  hasty  note  the 
pleasant  intelligence  that  he  had  met  Talma.  Kenney, 
the  dramatist,  was  at  this  time  living  at  Versailles,  and  to 
him  Lamb  owed  this  introduction.  Talma  had  lately 
given  a  thousand  francs  for  what  he  was  assured  was  an 
authentic  portrait  of  Shakspeare,  and  he  invited  Kenney 
to  bring  Lamb  to  see  it.  "It  is  painted,"  Lamb  writes, 
"  on  the  one  half  of  a  pair  of  bellows,  a  lovely  picture, 
corresponding  with  the  folio  head."  It  is  hard  to  believe 
that  Lamb  had  any  doubts  about  the  spuriousness  of  this 
relic,  though  his  language  on  the  point  is  dubious.  He 
quotes  the  rhymes  "  in  old  carved  wooden  letters "  that 
surrounded  the  portrait,  and  adds  the  significant  remark 
that  Ireland  was  not  found  out  by  his  parchments,  but  by 
bis  poetry.     And  perhaps  he  did  not  wish  to  hurt  Talma's 


VII.]  COLEBROOK  ROW,  ISLINGTON.  125 

feelings.  It  was  arranged  that  the  party  should  see  the 
tragedian  in  Regulus  the  same  evening,  and  that  he  should 
sup  with  them  after  the  performance.  Lamb,  we  are  told, 
"  could  not  at  all  enter  into  the  spirit  of  French  acting, 
and  in  his  general  distaste  made  no  exception  in  favour  of 
his  intended  guest.  This,  however,  did  not  prevent  their 
mutual  and  high  relish  of  each  other's  character  and  con- 
versation, nor  was  any  allusion  made  to  the  performance, 
till,  on  rising  to  go.  Talma  inquired  how  he  liked  it. 
Lamb  shook  his  head  and  smiled.  '  Ah !'  said  Talma. 
*I  was  not  very  happy  to-night:  you  must  see  me  in 
Sylla.''  *  Incidit  in  Scyllam,'  said  Lamb, '  qui  vult  vitare 
Charybdim.'  '  Ah !  you  are  a  rogue ;  you  are  a  great 
rogue,'  said  Talma,  shaking  him  cordially  by  the  hand,  as 
they  parted." 

There  is  a  sad  story,  only  too  likely  to  be  true,  that 
Mary  Lamb  was  seized  with  one  of  her  old  attacks  on  the 
journey,  and  had  to  be  left  at  Amiens  in  charge  of  her 
attendant.  If  so,  it  may  account  for  her  brother  avoiding 
the  subject  in  later  essays  and  letters.  An  Elia  essay  em- 
bodying even  the  surface  impressions  of  a  month's  stay  in 
Paris  would  have  been  a  welcome  addition  to  the  number. 
Lamb  was  usually  prompt  to  seize  on  the  latest  incident 
in  his  life  and  turn  it  to  this  purpose.  When  short-sight- 
ed George  Dyer,  leaving  the  cottage  at  Islington,  walked 
straight  into  the  New  River  in  broad  daylight,  the  advent- 
ure appears  the  very  next  month  in  the  London  Magazine, 
under  the  heading  of  Amicus  Redivivus.  But  France  and 
the  French  do  not  seem  to  have  opened  any  new  vein  of 
humour  or  observation.  In  truth.  Lamb  was  unused  to 
let  his  sympathies  go  forth  save  in  certain  customary  di- 
rections. Any  persons,  and  any  book  that  he  had  come 
to  know  well — any  one   of  the  "  old  familiar  faces " — ■ 


126  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

served  to  draw  out  those  sympathies.  Bat  novelties  he 
almost  always  passed  by  unmoved. 

The  first  series  of  Lamb's  essays,  under  the  title  of 
£lia  —  Essays  that  have  appeared  under  that  signature 
in  the  London  Magazine — was  published  in  a  single  vol- 
ume by  Taylor  and  Hessey  at  the  opening  of  the  year 
1823.  It  contained  the  contributions  of  something  less 
than  two  years.  As  yet  there  was  assuredly  no  sign  of 
failing  power  in  the  brain  and  heart  that  produced  them. 
Nor  did  Lamb  cease  to  contribute  to  the  magazine  and 
elsewhere  after  the  appearance  of  the  first  volume.  The 
second  series,  published  ten  years  later,  is  an  exception  to 
the  rule  that  sequels  must  necessarily  be  failures.  Old 
China  and  Poor  Relations^  the  Old  Margate  Hoy,  Blakes- 
moor,  Barbara  S.,  and  the  Superannuated  Man,  which  are 
found  in  the  second  series,  exhibit  all  Lamb's  qualities  at 
their  highest.  It  was  perhaps  only  a  passing  mood  of 
melancholy  that  made  him  write  to  Bernard  Barton,  in 
March,  1823,  when  the  book  had  already  begun  to  make 
its  mark :  "  They  have  dragged  me  again  into  the  maga- 
zine, but  I  feel  the  spirit  of  the  thing  in  my  own  mind 
quite  gone.  '  Some  brains '  (I  think  Ben  Jonson  says  it) 
*  will  endure  but  one  skimming.' "  But  another  cause  for 
this  depression  may  have  been  at  work.  There  was  a 
painful  incident  connected  with  the  Mia  volume  from  the 
first,  for  which  even  the  quick  appreciation  of  the  public 
could  not  compensate.  There  had  been  one  exception  to 
the  welcome  with  which  the  book  had  been  greeted.  A 
word  of  grave  disapprobation,  or  what  had  seemed  such  to 
Lamb,  had  been  heard  amid  the  chorus  of  approval,  and 
this  word  had  been  spoken  by  a  dear  and  valued  friend. 

In  the  Quarterly  Review  of  January,  1823,  appeared  an 
article,  known  to  be  by  Southey,  professing  to  be  a  review 


TIL]  CONTROVERSY   WITH  SOUTHEY.  127 

of  a  work  by  Gregoire,  ex-Bishop  of  Blois,  on  the  rise  and 
progress  of  Deism  in  France.  After  the  fashion  of  re- 
viewers, Southey  had  made  the  book  an  occasion  for  a 
general  survey  of  the  progress  of  free-thought  in  England 
as  well  as  abroad,  and  the  article  was  issued  with  the 
alarming  title.  Progress  of  Infidelity.  Towards  its  close 
Southey  is  led  very  characteristically  into  many  general 
reflections  on  the  reasonableness  of  belief,  and  the  unrea- 
sonableness of  scepticism,  and  while  engaged  on  this  line 
of  thought,  it  seems  to  have  occurred  to  him  that  he 
might  at  once  "point  a  moral"  and  call  attention  to  a 
friend's  book,  by  a  quotation  from  the  then  newly  pub- 
lished volume  of  Lamb.  And  this  is  how  he  set  about  it : 
"  Unbelievers  have  not  always  been  honest  enough  thus 
to  express  their  real  feelings;  but  this  we  know  concern- 
ing them,  that  when  they  have  renounced  their  birthright 
of  hope,  they  have  not  been  able  to  divest  themselves  of 
fear.  From  the  nature  of  the  human  mind  this  might  be 
presumed,  and  in  fact  it  is  so.  They  may  deaden  the 
heart  and  stupefy  the  conscience,  but  they  cannot  destroy 
the  imaginative  faculty.  There  is  a  remarkable  proof  of 
this  in  Elia^s  Essays,  a  book  which  wants  only  a  sounder 
religious  feeling,  to  be  as  delightful  as  it  is  original.  In 
that  upon  Witches  and  other  Night  Fears,  he  says:  '  It  is 
not  book  or  picture,  or  the  stories  of  foolish  servants, 
which  create  these  terrors  in  children.  They  can  at  most 
but  give  them  a  direction.  Dear  little  T.  H.,  who  of  all 
children  has  been  brought  up  with  the  most  scrupulous 
exclusion  of  every  taint  of  superstition,  who  was  never 
allowed  to  hear  of  goblin  or  apparition,  or  scarcely  to  be 
told  of  bad  men,  or  to  hear  or  read  of  any  distressing 
story,  finds  all  this  world  of  fear,  from  which  he  has  been 
so  rigidly  excluded  ah  extra,  in  his  own  "  thick-coming 


128  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

fancies ;"  and  from  bis  little  midnight  pillow  this  nurse- 
child  of  optimism  will  start  at  shapes,  unborrowed  of  tra- 
dition, in  sweats  to  which  the  reveries  of  the  cell-damned 
murderer  are  tranquillity.' " 

I  have  had  occasion  to  refer  to  this  essay  before,  in 
speaking  of  Lamb's  childhood.  For,  as  usual,  it  originated 
in  his  own  experience.  He  was  led  to  relate  how  from 
the  age  of  four  to  seven  his  nightly  sleep  had  been  dis- 
turbed by  childish  terrors,  in  which  the  grim  picture  of 
Saul  and  the  Witch,  in  Stackhouse's  History  of  the  Bible^ 
had  borne  so  prominent  a  part.  And  then,  in  order  to 
strengthen  his  argument  that  these  terrors  are  nervous,  and 
not  to  be  traced  to  any  gloomy  or  improper  religious  train- 
ing, he  cites  the  parallel  case,  within  his  own  knowledge, 
of  "  dear  little  T.  H."  All  Lamb's  friends  and  associates 
knew  that  this  was  little  Thornton  Hunt,  Leigh  Hunt's 
eldest  son.  The  use  of  initials  was  really  no  disguise  at 
all.  Lamb  admitted  in  his  subsequent  remonstrance  with 
Southey  that  to  call  him  T.  H.  was  "  as  good  as  naming 
him."  If  the  sanctity  of  private  life  had  been  violated,  it 
was  certainly  Lamb  who  had  set  the  example.  But,  as 
certainly,  he  bad  said  nothing  to  the  discredit  of  the  poor 
child  or  his  parents.  According  to  the  ethics  of  journal- 
ism current  sixty  years  ago  there  was  nothing  uncommon 
in  this  way  of  indicating  living  people.  Lamb  was  special- 
ly fond  of  bringing  in  his  friends  and  acquaintances  by 
their  initials.  His  own  family,  Coleridge,  Norris,  Barron 
Field,  and  many  others,  occur  repeatedly  in  his  writings 
in  this  guise.  He  was  intimate  with  Leigh  Hunt  and  his 
young  family,  and  sincerely  attached  to  them.  Nothing 
had  been  further  from  his  thoughts  than  to  cast  any  kind 
of  slight  upon  the  little  boy,  "  Thornton  Hunt,  my  favour- 
ite child,"  or  his  educators.     It  must  therefore  have  been 


vii.]  THE  CONTROVERSY  WITH  SOUTHEY.  129 

with  something  more  than  disgust  that  he  found  the  Quar- 
terly  reviewer,  proceeding,  after  the  passage  just  cited,  to 
point  out  with  unmistakable  animus  that  such  nervous  ter- 
rors were  easily  to  be  accounted  for  in  the  case  of  one  who 
had  been  brought  up  in  ignorance  of  all  the  facts  and  con- 
solations of  the  Christian  religion. 

It  is  possible  that  this  gratuitous  attack  upon  a  political 
opponent,  through  his  own  child,  was  not  added  to  the 
article  until  after  it  had  left  Southey's  hands.  All  that 
we  know  from  Southey  himself  is  that  his  sole  object  in 
mentioning  Lamb's  volume  had  been  to  call  attention  to 
its  general  merits — that  he  had  in  the  first  instance  written 
"a  saner  religious  feeling,"  which  was  the  word  that  ex- 
actly expressed  his  meaning ;  that  happily  remembering  in 
time  the  previous  history  of  the  Lamb  family,  he  had  hast- 
ily changed  the  word  to  "  sounder,"  meaning  to  re-cast  the 
sentence  when  the  article  returned  to  him  in  proof,  and 
that  the  opportunity  never  came.  We  may  be  sure  that 
this  explanation  represents  the  whole  truth.  Southey  had 
written  to  his  friend  Wynn,  in  the  very  month  in  which 
the  article  appeared :  "  Read  Elia,  if  the  book  has  not 
fallen  in  your  way.  It  is  by  my  old  friend,  Charles  Lamb. 
There  are  some  things  in  it  which  will  offend,  and  some 
which  will  pain  you,  as  they  do  me ;  but  you  will  find  in 
it  a  rich  vein  of  pure  gold."  And  the  things  which  pain- 
ed him  were  certainly  of  a  kind  about  which  the  word 
sane  might  be  more  properly  used  than  the  word  sound. 
Lamb  was  probably  mistaken  in  thinking  that  Southey  re- 
ferred to  certain  familiarities,  if  not  flippancies,  of  expres- 
sion on  serious  subjects  that  he  may  at  times  have  indulged 
in.  On  this  score  he  had  a  fair  retort  ready  in  the  various 
ballads  of  diablerie  that  Southey  had  not  disdained  to 
write,  and  to  publish.     Nor  was  Southey,  we  may  be  sure, 


ISO  CHARLES  LAMB.  [ohap. 

offended  by  so  genuinely  earnest  a  plea  for  temperance  and 
rational  gratitude  as  is  contained  in  the  essay  Grace  before 
Meat.  Rather  (as  Lamb  evidently  suspected)  was  it  such 
a  vein  of  speculation  as  that  followed  out  in  New  Year'i 
Eve,  which  would  cause  a  strange  chill  to  the  simple  faith 
and  steadfast  hopefulness  of  his  friend.  As  I  have  said, 
Lamb  seems  in  this  essay  to  have  written  with  the  express 
purpose  of  presenting  the  reverse  side  of  a  passage  in  his 
favourite  Religio  Medici.  Sir  Thomas  Browne  had  there 
written :  "  I  thank  God  I  have  not  those  strait  ligaments, 
or  narrow  obligations  to  the  world,  as  to  dote  on  life,  or 
be  convulsed  and  tremble  at  the  name  of  death."  "  When 
I  take  a  full  view  and  circle  of  myself  without  this  reason- 
able moderator,  and  equal  piece  of  justice,  death,  I  do  con- 
ceive myself  the  miserablest  person  extant."  Lamb  may 
have  argued  (in  the  very  words  applied  to  this  treatise  in 
the  essay  on  Imperfect  Sympathies)  that  it  was  all  very 
well  for  the  author  of  the  Religio  Medici,  "  mounted  upon 
the  airy  stilts  of  abstraction,"  to  "  overlook  the  impertinent 
individualities  of  such  poor  concretions  as  mankind,"  but 
that  to  him,  Elia,  death  meant  something  by  no  means  to 
be  defined  as  a  "  reasonable  moderator,"  and  "  equal  piece 
of  justice."  He  clung  to  the  things  he  saw  and  loved — 
the  friends,  the  books,  the  streets  and  crowds  around  him, 
and  he  was  not  ashamed  to  confess  that  death  meant  for 
him  the  absence  of  all  these,  and  that  he  could  not  look  it 
steadfastly  in  the  face. 

It  is  worth  noticing  that  the  profound  melancholy  of 
this  essay  had  already  attracted  attention,  and  formed  the 
subject  of  a  copy  of  verses,  in  the  form  of  a  Poetical  Epistle 
to  Elia,  signed  "Olen,"  in  the  London  Magazine  for  Au- 
gust, 1821.  Elia  had  been  there  taken  to  task,  in  lines 
of  much  eloquence  and  feeling,  for  his  negative  views  on 


vn.]  THE  CONTROVERSY  WITH  SOUTHEY.  181 

the  subject  of  a  future  life.  And  indeed,  for  all  the  dal- 
lying with  paradox,  and  the  free  blending  of  fact  with 
fiction,  in  this  singular  paper,  the  fragments  of  personal 
confession  are  very  remarkable.  There  are  few  things  in 
literature  more  pathetic  than  the  contrast  drawn  between 
the  two  stages  of  his  own  life,  as  if  he  would  have  given 
the  lie  sadly  to  his  friend's  adage  about  the  child  being 
father  of  the  man  : 

"If  I  know  aught  of  myself,  no  one  whose  mind  is  introspective 
— and  mine  is  painfully  so — can  have  a  less  respect  for  his  present 
identity,  than  I  have  for  the  man  Elia.  I  know  him  to  be  light,  and 
vain,  and  humoursome ;  a  notorious  .  .  .  ;  addicted  to  ...  ;  averse 
from  counsel,  neither  taking  it  nor  offering  it ;  .  .  .  besides ;  a  stam- 
mering buffoon ;  what  you  will ;  lay  it  on,  and  spare  not ;  I  subscribe 
to  it  all,  and  much  more  than  thou  canst  be  willing  to  lay  at  his  door 
— but  for  the  child  Elia — that  '  other  me '  there  in  the  background 
— I  must  take  leave  to  cherish  the  remembrance  of  that  young  mas- 
ter, with  as  little  reference,  I  protest,  to  this  stupid  changeling  of 
five-and-forty  as  if  it  had  been  a  child  of  some  other  house,  and  not 
of  my  parents.  I  can  cry  over  its  patient  small-pox  at  five,  and 
rougher  medicaments.  I  can  lay  its  poor  fevered  head  upon  the 
sick  pillow  at  Christ's,  and  wake  with  it  in  surprise  at  the  gentle 
posture  of  maternal  tenderness  hanging  over  it,  that  unknown  had 
watched  its  sleep.  I  know  how  it  shrank  from  any  the  least  colour 
of  falsehood.  God  help  thee,  Elia,  how  art  thou  changed !  Thou 
art  sophisticated.  I  know  how  honest,  how  courageous  (for  a  weak- 
ling) it  was ;  how  rehgious,  how  imaginative,  how  hopeful !  From 
what  have  I  not  fallen  if  the  child  I  remember  was  indeed  myself, 
and  not  some  dissembling  guardian,  presenting  a  false  identity,  to 
give  the  rule  to  my  unpractised  steps,  and  regulate  the  tone  of  my 
moral  being." 

Although  the  gloom  is  relieved  by  no  ray  of  hope  or 
consolation,  the  reality  of  the  self-reproach  might  well 
have  saved  the  writer  from  criticism,  even  as  to  the  "  sani- 
ty "  of  his  religious  feeling. 


182  CHARLES  LAMB.  [our. 

Lamb  was  annoyed,  rather  than  deeply  hurt,  by  the  at- 
tack upon  himself.  He  had  old  grievances  against  the 
Quarterly  Review.  Eight  or  nine  years  before,  he  had 
written  for  it  a  review  of  Wordsworth's  Excursion,  which 
Gifford  inserted  after  alterations  that  Lamb  compared  to 
pulling  out  the  eyes  and  leaving  only  the  bleeding  sockets. 
*'  I  cannot  give  you  an  idea  of  what  he  (Gifford)  has  done 
to  it,"  he  wrote  to  Wordsworth.  "  The  language  he  has 
altered  throughout.  Whatever  inadequateness  it  had  to 
its  subject,  it  was,  in  point  of  composition,  the  prettiest 
piece  of  prose  I  ever  writ."  And  it  is  clear  from  the  ar- 
ticle itself,  as  it  appears  in  the  number  for  October,  1814, 
that  this  language  is  not  exaggerated.  The  sweetness  and 
delicate  perception  of  the  author  are  there,  but  the  diction 
bears  little  of  his  peculiar  mark.  Then  had  come  the  un- 
fortunate reference  to  the  Confessions  of  a  Drunkard,  al- 
ready mentioned.  In  general  the  Quarterly  set  were  in 
implacable  opposition  to  the  Lamb  set,  and  now,  not  for 
the  first  time,  he  had  to  hear  hard  things  said,  not  only  of 
himself,  but  of  those  who  were  bound  to  him  by  ties  of 
strong  affection.  He  seems  not  to  have  been  informed  of 
the  attack  till  some  months  after  its  appearance.  It  is 
not  till  the  July  following,  at  least,  that  any  mention  of  it 
occurs  in  his  letters.  In  that  month  he  writes  to  Bernard 
Barton :  "  Southey  has  attacked  Elia  on  the  score  of  infi- 
delity, in  the  Quarterly  article.  Progress  of  Infidelity,  He 
might  have  spared  an  old  friend  such  a  construction  of  a 
few  careless  flights,  that  meant  no  harm  to  religion.  If  all 
his  unguarded  expressions  on  the  subject  were  to  be  col- 
lected— but  I  love  and  respect  Southey,  and  will  not  re- 
tort. I  hate  his  review  and  his  being  a  reviewer.  The 
hint  he  has  dropped  will  knock  the  sale  of  the  book  on 
the  head,  which  was  almost  at  a  stop  before."     This  last 


Tn.]  THE  CONTROVERSY  WITH  SOUTHEY.  183 

apprehension  was  evidently  groundless.  There  is  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  the  book  made  its  way  more  slowly  for 
the  paragraph  in  the  review.  For  whatever  here  and  there 
is  morbid  in  them,  the  Essays  themselves  contain  the  best 
antidote. 

Lamb  could  not  resist  the  opportunity  it  afforded  him 
for  a  fresh  essay  of  Elia,  and  in  the  London  for  October, 
1823,  appeared  the  Letter  of  Elia  to  Robert  Southey,  Esq. 
As  a  whole,  it  is  not  one  of  Lamb's  happiest  efforts.  His 
more  valid  grounds  of  complaint  against  the  review  are  set 
forth  with  suflScient  dignity  and  force.  He  urges  quite 
fairly  that  to  say  a  book  "  wants  a  sounder  religious  feel- 
ing," is  to  say  either  too  much  or  too  little.  And  the  in- 
decency of  attacking  Leigh  Hunt  through  his  own  child, 
a  boy  of  twelve,  is  properly  rebuked.  But  when  Lamb 
carries  the  war  into  the  enemy's  territory,  he  is  less  suc- 
cessful. As  two  blacks  do  not  make  a  white,  it  was  be- 
side the  mark  to  make  laborious  fun  over  Southey's  youth- 
ful ballads ;  and  the  grievances  as  to  the  fees  extorted  from 
visitors  to  Westminster  Abbey  comes  in  rather  flatly  as  a 
peroration.  The  concluding  paragraphs  of  the  letter  are 
the  only  portions  that  Lamb  afterwards  thought  well  to 
reprint.  They  appeared,  ten  years  later,  in  the  Second 
Series  of  Elia  under  the  title  of  Tombs  of  the  Abbey. 
The  letter,  as  a  whole,  is  given  in  Talfourd's  Memorials. 

Lamb  was  not  so  deeply  moved  by  Southey's  criticism 
but  that  he  could  make  some  sport  over  his  annoyance. 
What  actually  galled  him  was  the  attack,  through  himself, 
upon  a  friend.  In  previous  articles  in  the  same  Review 
he  had  found  himself  complimented  at  the  expense  of  an- 
other friend,  William  Hazlitt.  And  now  he  took  the  op- 
portunity to  vindicate  his  friendship  for  both  Hunt  and 
Hazlitt  in  a  passage  that  forms  the  most  interesting  and 


184  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

valuable'portion  of  the  letter.  There  had  been  a  coolness, 
he  tells  us,  between  himself  and  Hazlitt,  and  it  is  pleasant 
to  know  that  Lamb's  generosity  of  tone  at  this  time  help- 
ed to  make  the  relations  between  them  once  more  cordial. 
"  Protesting,"  he  says,  "  against  much  that  he  has  written, 
and  some  things  which  he  chooses  to  do ;  judging  him  by 
his  conversation  which  I  enjoyed  so  long,  and  relished  so 
deeply ;  or  by  his  books,  in  those  places  where  no  cloud- 
ing passion  intervenes,  I  should  belie  my  own  conscience 
if  I  said  less  than  that  I  think  W.  H.  to  be,  in  his  natural 
and  healthy  state,  one  of  the  wisest  and  finest  spirits 
breathing.  So  far  from  being  ashamed  of  that  intimacy 
which  was  betwixt  us,  it  is  my  boast  that  I  was  able  for 
so  many  years  to  have  preserved  it  entire ;  and  I  think  I 
shall  go  to  my  grave  without  finding  or  expecting  to  find 
such  another  companion."  Not  less  manly  and  noble  is 
the  justification  of  his  steady  friendship  for  Leigh  Hunt, 
at  that  time  living  abroad,  and  with  a  reputation  in  Eng- 
land of  ill  savour  with  those  to  whom  the  pages  of  the 
Quarterly  were  addressed.  "L.  H.  is  now  in  Italy;  on 
his  departure  to  which  land,  with  much  regret,  I  took  my 
leave  of  him  and  of  his  little  family,  seven  of  them,  sir, 
with  their  mother,  and  as  kind  a  set  of  little  people  (T.  H. 
and  all),  as  affectionate  children  as  ever  blessed  a  parent. 
Had  you  seen  them,  sir,  I  think  you  could  not  have  looked 
upon  them  as  so  many  little  Jonases,  but  rather  as  pledges 
of  the  vessel's  safety,  that  was  to  bear  such  a  freight  of 
love.  I  wish  you  would  read  Mr.  H.'s  lines  to  that  same 
T.  H.,  *  six  years  old,  during  a  sickness ' — 

" '  Sleep  breaks  at  last  from  out  thee, 
My  little  patient  boy ' — 

(they  are  to  be  found  on  the  47th  page  of  Foliage) — and 


til]  the  controversy  with  SOUTHEY.  188 

ask  yourself  how  far  they  are  out  of  the  spirit  of  Chris* 
tianity." 

As  he  wrote  these  words,  Lamb  may  have  recalled  how 
his  own  unfailing  sympathy  had  been  a  comfort  to  this 
friend  in  those  darker  days  when  Leigh  Hunt  was  under- 
going his  two  years'  imprisonment  in  the  Surrey  jail  for 
his  newspaper  attack  on  the  Prince  Regent.  Lamb  and 
his  sister  were  among  the  Hunts'  most  regular  visitors  at 
that  time.  "  My  eldest  little  boy,"  writes  Hunt  in  his 
Autobiography,  "was  my  constant  companion,  and  we 
used  to  play  all  sorts  of  juvenile  games  together."  And 
it  was  on  watching  the  child  at  play  among  the  uncon- 
genial surroundings  of  prison  life  that  Lamb  had  written 
his  own  lines  to  "  T.  L.  H. — a  child,"  comforting  child  and 
father  with  the  thought  that  the  time  of  deliverance  was 
at  hand,  when  the  boy  would  be  once  more  in  his  native 
element,  breathing  the  healthful  air  and  plucking  the  wild 
flowers  on  Hampstead  Heath.  Lamb  was  always  tender 
over  children,  and  these  lines  have  a  simplicity,  over  and 
above  their  studied  quaintness,  that  savours  pleasantly  of 
Blake : 

"  Guileless  traitor,  rebel  mild, 

Convict  unconscious,  culprit-cMld ! 

Gates  that  close  with  iron  roar 

Have  been  to  thee  thy  nursery  door ; 

Chains  that  chink  in  cheerless  cells 

Have  been  thy  rattles  and  thy  bells : 

Walls  contrived  for  giant  sin 

Have  hemmed  thy  faultless  weakness  in : 

Near  thy  sinless  bed  black  guilt 

Her  discordant  house  hath  built, 

And  filled  it  with  her  monstrous  brood- 
Sights  by  thee  not  understood — 

Sights  of  fear,  and  of  distress, 

That  pass  a  harmless  infant's  guesBl 
K 


136  CHARLES  LAMB.  [char 

But  the  clouds  that  overcast 
Thy  young  morning  may  not  last. 
Soon  shall  arrive  the  rescuing  hour 
That  yields  thee  up  to  Nature's  power. 
Nature  that  so  late  doth  greet  thee 
Shall  in  o'erflowing  measure  meet  thee. 
She  shall  recompense  with  cost 
For  every  lesson  thou  hast  lost. 
-  Then  wandering  up  thy  sire's  loved  hill 

Thou  shalt  take  thy  airy  fill 
Of  health  and  pastime.     Birds  shall  sing 
For  thy  delight  each  May  morning. 
'Mid  new-yeaned  lambkins  thou  shalt  play, 
Hardly  less  a  lamb  than  they. 
Then  thy  prison's  lengthened  bound 
Shall  be  the  horizon  skirting  round. 
And,  while  thou  fiU'st  thy  lap  with  flowers 
To  make  amends  for  wintry  hours, 
The  breeze,  the  sunshine,  and  the  place, 
Shall  from  thy  tender  brow  efface 
Each  vestige  of  untimely  care 
That  sour  restraint  had  graven  there ; 
And  on  thy  every  look  impress 
A  more  excelling  childishness. 
So  shall  be  thy  days  beguiled, 
Thornton  Hunt,  my  favourite  child." 

Southey  first  learned  from  the  pages  of  the  London  Mag- 
azine the  effect  of  the  language  used  by  him  in  the  Quar- 
terly Review.  "  On  my  part,"  he  wrote  to  his  publisher, 
after  reading  Lamb's  epistle,  "there  was  not  even  a  mo- 
mentary feeling  of  anger.  I  was  very  much  surprised  and 
grieved,  because  I  knew  how  much  he  would  condemn 
himself,  and  yet  no  resentful  letter  was  ever  written  less 
offensively ;  his  gentle  nature  may  be  seen  in  it  through- 
out" Southey  was  in  London  in  the  month  after  the  pub- 
lication of  Lamb's  remonstrance,  and  wrote  him  a  letter  in 


vn.J     THE  CONTROVERSY  WITH  SOUTHEY.      13Y 

language  full  of  affection  and  sorrow.  The  soreness  at 
once  passed  away.  "Dear  Southey,"  he  replied,  "the 
kindness  of  your  note  has  melted  away  the  mist  which 
was  upon  me.  I  have  been  fighting  against  a  shadow. 
That  accursed  Q.  R.  had  vexed  me  by  a  gratuitous  speak- 
ing, of  its  own  knowledge,  that  the  Confessions  of  a  D d 

was  a  genuine  description  of  the  state  of  the  writer.  Lit- 
tle things  that  are  not  ill  meant  may  produce  much  ill. 
That  might  have  injured  me  alive  and  dead :  I  am  in  a 
public  oflice,  and  my  life  is  insured.  I  was  prepared  for 
anger,  and  I  thought  I  saw  in  a  few  obnoxious  words  a 
hard  case  of  repetition  directed  against  me.  I  wish  both 
Magazine  and  Review  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  I  shall  be 
ashamed  to  see  you,  and  my  sister  (though  innocent)  still 
more  so ;  for  the  folly  was  done  without  her  knowledge, 
and  has  made  her  uneasy  ever  since.  My  guardian  angel 
was  absent  at  that  time.  I  will  muster  up  courage  to  see 
you,  however,  any  day  next  week.  We  shall  hope  that 
you  will  bring  Edith  with  you.  That  will  be  a  second  mor- 
tification. She  will  hate  to  see  us ;  but  come,  and  heap  em- 
bers. We  deserve  it — I  for  what  I've  done,  and  she  for  be- 
ing my  sister."  The  visit  was  paid,  and  the  old  intimacy 
renewed,  never  again  to  be  weakened  by  unkindly  word. 

In  this  note  to  Southey,  Lamb  has  to  tell  of  a  change  of 
address.  In  August  of  this  year  he  and  his  sister  had  final- 
ly moved  from  Russell  Street,  and  for  the  first  time  in  their 
united  lives  became  householders.  The  rooms  over  the 
brazier's  had  from  the  first  had  many  drawbacks,  and  for 
some  years  the  brother  and  sister  had  occasionally  retired 
to  a  rural  lodging  at  Dalston,  partly  to  enjoy  a  short  res- 
pite from  the  din  of  the  theatres  and  the  market,  but  chief- 
ly that  Charles  might  be  able  to  write  without  interruption 
from  the  increasing  band  of  intruders  on  his  scanty  lei- 
23 


188  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

sure.  There  is  a  pretty  glimpse  of  one  sucli  period  of  re- 
treat in  a  note  to  Miss  Hutchinson  of  April  in  this  year : 
"Meanwhile  of  afternoons  we  pick  up  primroses  at  Dal- 
ston,  and  Mary  corrects  me  when  I  call  'em  cowslips." 
And  now  they  resolved  to  fix  their  tent  permanently  with- 
in reach  of  primroses  and  cowslips,  and  Charles  must  tell 
the  story  in  his  own  words.  He  writes  to  Bernard  Bar- 
ton :  "  When  you  come  Londonward,  you  will  find  me  no 
longer  in  Covent  Garden.  I  have  a  cottage  in  Colebrook 
Row,  Islington ;  a  cottage,  for  it  is  detached ;  a  white 
house  with  six  good  rooms ;  the  New  River  (rather  elderly 
by  this  time)  runs  (if  a  moderate  walking  pace  can  be  so 
termed)  close  to  the  foot  of  the  house ;  and  behind  is  a 
spacious  garden  with  vines  (I  assure  you),  pears,  strawber- 
ries, parsnips,  leeks,  carrots,  cabbages,  to  delight  the  heart 
of  old  Alcinous.  You  enter  without  passage  into  a  cheer- 
ful dining-room,  all  studded  over  and  rough  with  old 
books ;  and  above  is  a  lightsome  drawing  -  room,  three 
windows,  full  of  choice  prints.  I  feel  like  a  great  lord, 
never  having  had  a  house  before."  The  sequel  must  be 
given,  so  amusingly  illustrative  of  the  snares  and  pitfalls 
that  are  inseparable  even  from  rural  felicity :  "I  am  so 
taken  up  with  pruning  and  gardening,  quite  a  new  sort  of 
occupation  to  me.  I  have  gathered  my  Jargonels,  but  my 
Windsor  pears  are  backward.  The  former  were  of  exqui- 
site raciness.  I  do  now  sit  under  my  own  vine  and  con- 
template the  growth  of  vegetable  nature.  I  can  now  un- 
derstand in  what  sense  they  speak  of  father  Adam.  I  rec- 
ognize the  paternity  while  I  watch  my  tulips.  I  almost 
fell  with  him,  for  the  first  day  I  turned  a  drunken  gar- 
dener (as  he  let  in  the  serpent)  into  my  Eden,  and  he  laid 
about  him,  lopping  off  some  choice  boughs,  &c.,  which 
hang  over  from  a  neighbour's  garden,  and  in  his  blind  zeal 


Tn,]  THE  CONTROVERSY  WITH  SOUTHEY.  139 

laid  waste  a  shade  which  had  sheltered  their  window  from 
the  gaze  of  passers-by.  The  old  gentlewoman  (fury  made 
her  not  handsome)  could  scarcely  be  reconciled  by  all  my 
fine  words.  There  was  no  buttering  her  parsnips.  She 
talked  of  the  law.  What  a  lapse  to  commit  on  the  first 
day  of  my  happy  *  garden  state !' " 

The  same  letter  tells  of  the  failing  fortunes  of  the  Lcm- 
don  Magazine.  Lamb  was  still  contributing  to  its  pages, 
though  not  so  regularly  as  of  old.  He  speaks  of  himself 
as  lingering  among  its  creaking  rafters,  like  the  last  rat, 
and  of  many  ominous  secessions  from  the  ranks  of  its  old 
supporters.  Hazlitt  and  Procter  had  forsaken  it,  and  with 
them  one  who  might  well  have  been  spared  before,  the 
wretched  Wainwright,  who  had  contributed  to  its  pages 
various  flimsy  and  conceited  rhapsodies  on  art  and  letters. 
It  is  characteristic  of  Lamb  that  he  always  finds  some 
good-natured  word  to  say  of  this  man,  such  as  "  kind  "  or 
"  light-hearted,"  principally,  no  doubt,  because  the  others 
of  his  set  looked  on  him  with  some  suspicion.'  It  was  his 
way  to  seek  for  the  redeeming  qualities  in  those  the  world 
looked  coldly  on.  He  did  not  live  to  know  the  worst  of 
this  now  notorious  hypocrite  and  scoundrel. 

In  their  autumn  holiday  of  1823,  Charles  and  Mary 
Lamb  made  an  acquaintance  destined  for  the  next  ten 
years  to  add  a  new  and  most  happy  interest  to  their  lonely 
lives.  They  were  still  faithful  to  the  University  towns  in 
vacation  time,  and  at  the  house  of  a  friend  in  Cambridge, 
where  Charles  liked  to  play  his  evening  game  at  whist, 
they  found  a  little  girl,  the  orphan  daughter  of  Charles 
Isola,  one  of  the  Esquire  Bedells  of  the  University ;  her 
grandfather,  an  Italian  refugee,  having  settled  in  Cam- 
bridge as  teacher  of  his  own  language.  The  child,  who 
was  at  other  times  at  school,  spent  her  holidays  with  an 


140  CHARIJ5S  LAMB.  [chap. 

aunt  in  Cambridge.  The  Lambs  took  a  strong  fancy  to 
her,  invited  her  to  stay  with  them  during  her  next  holi- 
days, and  finally  adopted  her.  She  called  them  uncle  and 
aunt,  and  their  house  was  generally  her  home,  until  her 
marriage  with  Mr.  Moxon,  the  publisher,  in  1833.  The 
education  of  this  young  girl  became  the  constant  care 
of  the  brother  and  sister.  They  wished  to  give  her  the 
means  of  becoming  herself  a  teacher,  in  the  event  of  her 
not  marrying,  and  while  Charles  taught  her  Latin,  Mary 
Lamb  worked  hard  at  French  that  she  might  assist  her 
young  pupil.  Many  are  the  allusions  in  the  letters  of  the 
last  years  to  "  our  Emma ;"  and  as  Mary  Lamb's  periods 
of  mental  derangement  became  more  and  more  frequent 
and  protracted,  this  new  relationship  became  ever  a  greater 
comfort  to  them  both. 

In  the  meantime  Charles  was  fretting  under  the  unbro- 
ken confinement  of  oflSce  life.  "  I  have  been  insuperably 
dull  and  lethargic  for  many  weeks,"  he  writes  to  Bernard 
Barton  early  in  1824,  "and  cannot  rise  to  the  vigour  of  a 
letter,  much  less  an  essay.  The  London  must  do  without 
me  for  a  time,  for  I  have  lost  all  interest  about  it."  A 
subsequent  letter,  in  August,  tells  the  same  tale  of  increas- 
ing weariness.  "The  same  indisposition  to  write  has 
stopped  my  *  Elias,'  but  you  will  see  a  futile  effort  in  the 
next  number, '  wrung  from  me  with  slow  pain.'  The  fact 
is,  my  head  is  seldom  cool  enough.  I  am  dreadfully  in- 
dolent." The  "  futile  effort "  in  the  next  number  was  no 
other  than  the  beautiful  essay  on  Blakesmoor,  fresh  proof 
(if  any  were  needed)  that  "diflBcult  writing"  need  not 
make  itself  felt  as  such  by  the  reader.  Nothing  more 
unforced  in  style  ever  came  from  Charles  Lamb's  hand — 
no  sentences  more  perfect  in  feeling  and  expression  than 
those  with  which  it  ends : 


rn.]  THE  CONTROVERSY  WITH  SOUTHEY.  141 

"Mine,  too — whose  else? — the  costly  fruit  -  garden,  with  its  sun- 
baked southern  wall ;  the  ampler  pleasure-garden,  rising  backwards 
from  the  house  in  triple  terraces,  with  flower-pots,  now  of  palest  lead, 
save  that  a  speck,  here  and  there,  saved  from  the  elements,  bespoke 
their  pristine  state  to  have  been  gilt  and  glittering;  the  verdant 
quarters,  backwarder  still ;  and,  stretching  still  beyond,  in  old  for- 
mality, the  firry  wilderness,  the  haunt  of  the  squirrel  and  the  day- 
long-murmuring wood-pigeon,  with  that  antique  image  in  the  centre, 
god  or  goddess  I  wist  not ;  but  child  of  Athens  or  old  Rome  paid 
never  a  sincerer  worship  to  Pan  or  to  Sylvanus  in  their  native  groves, 
than  I  to  that  fragmental  mystery. 

"  Was  it  for  this  that  I  kissed  my  childish  hands  too  fervently  in 
your  idol  worship,  walks  and  windings  of  Blakesmoor !  for  this,  or 
what  sin  of  mine,  has  the  plough  passed  over  your  pleasant  places  ? 
I  sometimes  think  that  as  men,  when  they  die,  do  not  die  all,  so  of 
their  extinguished  habitations  there  may  be  a  hope — a  germ  to  be 
revivified." 

The  "  firry  wilderness  "  still  remains,  and  in  the  grassy 
meadow  where  house  and  garden  once  stood  may  faintly 
be  traced  the  undulations  of  the  ground  where  the  triple 
terraces  rose  backwards;  but  this  is  all  of  the  actual 
Blakesmoor  that  survives.  Yet  in  this  very  essay  Lamb 
has  fulfilled  his  own  happy  vision,  and  revivified  for  all 
time  that  "  extinguished  habitation." 

In  spite  of  indolence  and  low  spirits,  the  hand  of  Lamb 
had  not  lost  its  cunning,  as  the  pretty  Album  verses  writ- 
ten for  Bernard  Barton's  daughter,  Lucy,  sufficiently  tes- 
tify. They  were  sent  to  Barton  at  the  end  of  this  month, 
September.  "I  am  ill  at  these  numbers,"  he  pleaded, 
"  but  if  the  above  be  not  too  mean  to  have  a  place  in  thy 
daughter's  sanctum,  take  them  with  pleasure."  The  lines 
are  interesting,  as  giving  another  proof  of  Lamb's  native 
sympathy  with  the  Quaker  simplicity.  His  Elia  essay  on 
the  Quakers'  Meeting  has  shown  it.  He  had  impressed 
Leigh  Hunt,  when  a  boy,  by  his  Quaker-like  demeanour. 
7* 


142  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

He  had  conveyed  to  Hood,  we  remember,  on  their  first 
meeting,  the  idea  of  a  "  Quaker  in  black."  He  had  told 
Barton  in  an  earlier  letter,  "  In  feelings,  and  matters  not 
dogmatical,  I  hope  I  am  half  a  Quaker."  And  here,  tak- 
ing the  word  Album  as  text,  *'  little  book,  surnamed  of 
TTAtte,"  he  descants  on  the  themes  alone  fitted  to  find 
shelter  in  such  a  home : 

"  Whitest  thoughts,  in  whitest  dress, 
Candid  meanings,  best  express 
Mind  of  quiet  Quakeress." 

In  February  and  March  of  the  following  year,  his  letters 
to  Barton — the  correspondent  who  now  drew  forth  his  best 
and  most  varied  powers — show  that  the  desire  for  rest  was 
becoming  irritably  strong.  "  Your  gentleman  brother  sets 
my  mouth  watering  after  liberty.  Oh  that  I  were  kicked 
out  of  Leadenhall  with  every  mark  of  indignity,  and  a 
competence  in  my  fob.  The  birds  of  the  air  would  not 
be  so  free  as  I  should.  How  I  would  prance  and  curvet 
it,  and  pick  up  cowslips,  and  ramble  about  purposeless  as 
an  idiot !"  Later  in  March  we  learn  that  he  had  conveyed 
to  the  Directors  of  the  East  India  Company  his  willing- 
ness to  resign.  "  I  am  sick  of  hope  deferred,"  he  writes. 
"  The  grand  wheel  is  in  agitation  that  is  to  turn  up  my 
fortune ;  but  round  it  rolls,  and  will  turn  up  nothing.  I 
have  a  glimpse  of  freedom,  of  becoming  a  gentleman  at 
large,  but  I  am  put  off  from  day  to  day.  I  have  offered 
my  resignation,  and  it  is  neither  accepted  nor  rejected. 
Eight  weeks  am  I  kept  in  this  fearful  suspense.  Guess 
what  an  absorbing  state  I  feel  it.  I  am  not  conscious  of 
the  existence  of  friends,  present  or  absent.  The  East 
India  Directors  alone  can  be  that  thing  to  me,  or  not.    I 


vn.]  RETIREMENT  FROM  THE  INDU  HOUSE,  148 

have  just  learned  that  nothing  will  be  decided  this  week. 
Why  the  next  ?  why  any  week  ?" 

When  he  wrote  these  words,  the  gratification  of  his 
hopes  was  nearer  than  he  thought.  He  can  scarcely  have 
had  any  serious  anxiety  as  to  the  result  of  his  application. 
Some  weeks  before  he  had  received  some  kind  of  intima- 
tion that  the  matter  might  be  arranged  to  his  satisfaction, 
and  his  medical  friends  had  certified  that  failing  health 
and  spirits  made  the  step  at  least  desirable.  But  he  had 
served  only  thirty-three  years,  and  it  was  not  unusual  for 
clerks  to  complete  a  term  of  forty  or  fifty  years'  service, 
so  that  he  may  have  had  some  uneasy  doubts  as  to  the 
amount  of  pension.  But  all  doubts  were  happily  dis- 
pelled on  the  last  Tuesday  in  March,  1825,  when  the  Di- 
rectors sent  for  him  and  acquainted  him  with  the  resolu- 
tion they  had  passed. 

Lamb  has  described  this  interview  in  several  letters,  but 
nowhere  so  fully  as  in  the  Elia  essay,  the  Superannuated 
Man,  which,  after  his  custom,  he  at  once  prepared  for  the 
next  month's  London  Magazine.  With  the  one  exception, 
that  he  transforms  the  Directors  of  the  India  House  into 
a  private  firm  of  merchants,  and  with  one  or  two  other 
slight  changes  of  detail,  the  account  seems  to  be  a  faith- 
ful version  of  what  actually  happened : 

"  A  week  passed  in  this  manner,  the  most  anxious  one,  I  verily  be- 
lieve, in  my  life,  when  on  the  evening  of  the  12th  of  April,  just  as 
I  was  about  quitting  my  desk  to  go  home  (it  might  be  about  eight 
o'clock)  I  received  an  awful  summons  to  attend  the  presence  of  the 
whole  assembled  firm  in  the  formidable  back  parlour.  I  thought, 
Now  my  time  has  surely  come ;  I  have  done  for  myself.     I  am  going 

to  be  told  that  they  have  no  longer  occasion  for  me.     L ,  I  could 

Bee,  smiled  at  the  terror  I  was  in,  which  was  a  httle  relief  to  me ; 

when  to  my  utter  astonishment,  B ,  the  eldest  partner,  began  a 

formal  harangue  to  me  on  the  length  of  my  services,  my  very  meri- 


144  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

torious  conduct  during  the  whole  of  the  time  (the  deuce,  thought  I, 
how  did  he  find  out  that?  I  protest  I  never  had  the  confidence  to 
think  as  much).  He  went  on  to  descant  on  the  expediency  of  retiring 
at  a  certain  time  of  life  (how  my  heart  panted !),  and  asking  me  a  few 
questions  as  to  the  amount  of  my  own  property,  of  which  I  have  a 
little,  ended  with  a  proposal,  to  which  his  three  partners  nodded  a 
grave  assent,  that  I  should  accept  from  the  house  which  I  had  served 
so  well  a  pension  for  life  to  the  amount  of  two-thirds  of  my  accus- 
tomed salary — a  magnificent  offer !  I  do  not  know  what  I  answered 
between  surprise  and  gratitude,  but  it  was  understood  that  I  accept- 
ed their  proposal,  and  I  was  told  that  I  was  free  from  that  hour  to 
leave  their  service.  I  stammered  out  a  bow,  and  at  just  ten  minutes 
after  eight  I  went  home — for  ever." 

The  munificence  thus  recorded  was  happily  no  fiction. 
Lamb's  full  salary  at  the  time  was  little  short  of  seven 
hundred  a  year,  and  the  offer  made  to  him  was  a  pension 
of  four  hundred  and  fifty,  with  a  deduction  of  nine  pounds 
a  year  to  secure  a  fitting  provision  for  his  sister,  in  the 
event  of  her  surviving  him.  "  Here  am  I,"  he  writes  to 
Wordsworth,  "  after  thirty-three  years'  slavery,  sitting  in 
my  own  room  at  eleven  o'clock,  this  finest  of  all  April 
mornings,  a  freed  man,  with  441 Z,  a  year  for  the  remain- 
der of  my  life,  live  I  as  long  as  John  Dennis,  who  outlived 
his  annuity,  and  starved  at  ninety." 

The  East  India  Directors  seem  to  have  been  generous 
and  considerate  in  a  marked  degree.  If  they  wished  to 
pay  some  compliment  to  literature  in  the  person  of  their 
distinguished  clerk,  it  was  not  less  to  their  credit.  But  in 
spite  of  Lamb's  modest  language  as  to  his  oflScial  claims 
upon  their  kindness,  it  would  seem  that  he  served  them 
steadily  and  faithfully  during  those  thirty -three  years. 
Save  for  his  brief  annual  holiday,  he  stuck  to  his  post. 
He  wrote  his  letters  from  the  desk  in  Leadenhall  Street, 
and  received  some  of  his  callers  there,  but  there  is  nothing 


Til.]  RETIREMENT  FROM  THE  INDIA  HOUSE.  146 

to  show  that  he  neglected  his  daily  work.  He  had  some- 
times to  tell  of  headache  and  indisposition,  as  when  he 
had  been  dining  with  the  poets  the  night  before,  where 
they  had  not  "  quaffed  Hippocrene,  but  Hippocrass  rath- 
er." And  there  is  a  tradition — not  to  be  too  curiously 
questioned — that  on  occasion  of  being  reproved  for  com- 
ing to  the  oflBce  late  in  the  mornings,  he  pleaded  that  he 
made  up  for  it  by  going  away  very  early.  But  these  pec- 
cadilloes are  as  nothing  set  against  the  long  extent  of  act- 
ual service,  and  the  hearty  and  spontaneous  action  of  his 
employers  at  its  close. 

Though  Lamb  had  always  fretted  against  what  he  call- 
ed his  slavery  to  the  "  desk's  dead  wood,"  the  discipline 
of  regular,  and  even  of  mechanical  work,  was  of  infinite 
service  to  him.  With  his  special  temperament,  bodily 
and  mental,  he  needed,  of  all  men,  the  compulsion  of 
duty.  The  "  unchartered  freedom  "  and  the  "  weight  of 
chance  desires,"  which  his  friend  Wordsworth  has  so 
feelingly  lamented,  would  have  been  shipwreck  to  him. 
When  deliverance  from  the  necessity  of  toil  came,  he 
could  not  altogether  resist  their  baneful  effects.  And  we 
may  be  sure  that  we  should  not  have  had  more,  but  few- 
er Essays  of  Mia,  if  the  daily  routine  of  different  labour 
had  been  less  severe  or  regular.  He  was  well  paid  for 
the  best  of  his  literary  work,  but  there  was  no  pressure 
upon  him  to  write  for  bread.  "Thank  God,"  he  writes 
to  Bernard  Barton,  *'  you  and  I  are  something  besides  be- 
ing writers !  There  is  corn  in  Egypt,  while  there  is  cash 
at  Leadenhall  I" 


CHAPTER  Vm. 

KNFIELD    AND    EDMONTON. 

[1826-1834.] 

"  I  CAMK  home  for  ever  on  Tuesday  in  last  week,"  Lamb 
writes  to  Wordsworth,  on  the  6th  of  April,  1825.  "The 
incomprehensibleness  of  my  condition  overwhelmed  me. 
It  was  like  passing  from  life  into  eternity.  Every  year 
to  be  as  long  as  three,  i.  e.,  to  have  three  times  as  much 
real  time — time  that  is  my  own,  in  it !  I  wandered  about 
thinking  I  was  happy,  but  feeling  I  was  not.  But  that 
tumultuousness  is  passing  off,  and  I  begin  to  understand 
the  nature  of  the  gift.  Holidays,  even  the  annual  month, 
were  always  uneasy  joys  :  their  conscious  f ugitiveness ; 
the  craving  after  making  the  most  of  them.  Now,  when 
all  is  holiday,  there  are  no  holidays.  I  can  sit  at  home, 
in  rain  or  shine,  without  a  restless  impulse  for  walkings. 
I  am  daily  steadying,  and  shall  soon  find  it  as  natural  to 
me  to  be  my  own  master,  as  it  has  been  irksome  to  have 
had  a  master.  Mary  wakes  every  morning  with  an  obscure 
feeling  that  some  good  has  happened  to  us." 

Certain  misgivings  as  to  the  consequences  of  the  step  he 
had  taken  are  apparent  here,  even  in  his  words  of  congrat- 
ulation. They  appear  elsewhere,  as  in  a  letter  to  Barton 
of  the  same  month,  where  he  tells  how  the  day  before  he 


CHAP.viii.]  ENFIELD  AND  EDMONTON.  147 

had  gone  back  and  sat  at  his  old  desk  among  his  old  com- 
panions, and  felt  yearnings  at  having  left  them  in  the  lurch. 
Still,  he  was  forcing  himself  to  take  the  most  hopeful  view 
of  the  change  in  his  life,  and  the  essay  on  the  Superannu- 
ated Man,  that  appeared  a  month  later  in  the  London^ 
elaborates  with  excellent  skill  the  feelings  which  he  wish- 
ed to  cultivate  and  preserve.  "  A  man  can  never  have  too 
much  Time  to  himself,  nor  too  little  to  do.  Had  I  a  little 
son,  I  would  christen  him  Nothing-to-do;  he  should  do 
nothing.  Man,  I  verily  believe,  is  out  of  his  element  as 
long  as  he  is  operative.  I  am  altogether  for  the  life  con- 
templative." 

One  of  the  earliest  uses  that  he  made  of  his  freedom 
was  to  pay  visits  out  of  London  with  Mary.  In  the  sum- 
mer they  are  at  Enfield,  having  quiet  holidays.  "Mary 
walks  her  twelve  miles  a  day  some  days,"  Charles  writes 
to  Southey  in  August,  "  and  I  my  twenty  on  others.  'Tis 
all  holiday  with  me  now,  you  know.  The  change  works 
admirably."  But  as  time  went  on,  the  change  was  found 
to  be  less  admirable.  The  spur  and  the  discipline  of  reg- 
ular hours  and  occupation  being  taken  away,  Lamb  had 
to  make  occupation,  or  else  to  find  amusement  in  its  stead. 
He  had  been  always  fond  of  walking,  and  he  now  tried  the 
experiment  of  a  companion  in  his  walks  in  the  shape  of  a 
dog.  Dash,  that  Hood  had  given  him.  But  the  dog  proved 
unmanageable,  and  was  fond  of  running  away  down  any  oth- 
er streets  than  those  intended  by  his  master,  and  Lamb  had 
to  part  with  him  a  year  or  two  later  in  despair.  He  passed 
Dash  on  to  Mr.  Patmore,  and  to  this  change  of  ownership 
we  owe  the  amusing  letter  in  which  he  writes  for  infor- 
mation as  to  the  dog's  welfare.  "Dear  P.,  excuse  my 
anxiety,  but  how  is  Dash?  I  should  have  asked  if  Mrs. 
Patmore  kept  her  rules,  and  was  improving ;  but  Daah 


148  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

came  uppermost.  The  order  of  our  thought  should  be 
the  order  of  our  writing.  Goes  he  muzzled,  or  aperto  ore  ? 
Are  his  intellects  sound,  or  does  he  wander  a  little  in  his 
conversation?  You  cannot  be  too  careful  to  watch  the 
first  symptoms  of  incoherence.  The  first  illogical  snarl 
he  makes — to  St.  Luke's  with  him.  All  the  dogs  here  are 
going  mad,  if  you  can  believe  the  overseers :  but  I  pro- 
test, they  seem  to  me  very  rational  and  collected.  But 
nothing  is  so  deceitful  as  mad  people,  to  those  who  are 
not  used  to  them.  Try  him  with  hot  water ;  if  he  won't 
lick  it  up  it  is  a  sign — he  does  not  like  it.  Does  his  tail 
wag  horizontally,  or  perpendicularly?  That  has  decided 
the  fate  of  many  dogs  in  Enfield.  Is  his  general  deport- 
ment cheerful  ?  I  mean  when  he  is  pleased,  for  otherwise 
there  is  no  judging.  You  can't  be  too  careful.  Has 
he  bit  any  of  the  children  yet?  If  he  has,  have  them 
shot,  and  keep  him  for  curiosity,  to  see  if  it  is  the  hydro- 
phobia " — and  so  this  "  excellent  fooling  "  rambles  on  into 
still  wilder  extravagances.  "  We  are  dawdlirg  our  time 
away  very  idly  and  pleasantly,"  the  letter  concludes, "  at 
a  Mrs.  Leishman's,  Chace,  Enfield,  where  if  you  come  a 
hunting,  we  can  give  you  cold  meat  and  a  tankard."  For 
two  years  from  the  time  of  his  leaving  the  India  House,  the 
brother  and  sister  paid  occasional  visits  to  Mrs.  Leishman's 
lodgings,  until,  finally,  in  1827,  they  became  sole  tenants 
of  the  little  house,  furnished. 

The  year  1827  opened  sadly  for  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb. 
Since  the  death  of  their  father,  thirty  years  before,  they 
had  not  had  to  mourn  the  loss  of  many  friends  connected 
with  their  early  life.  Their  brother  John  had  died  five 
years  before — ^but  he  had  helped  to  make  their  real  lone- 
liness felt,  rather  than  to  relieve  it — and  they  had  no  oth- 
er near  relations.     But  there  was  one  dear  friend  of  the 


nu.]  ENFIELD  AND  EDMONTON.  149 

family,  who  had  been  associated  with  them  in  their  sea- 
sons of  heaviest  sorrow  and  hardest  struggle.  This  was 
Mr.  Randal  Norris,  for  many  years  sub-treasurer  and  libra- 
rian of  the  Inner  Temple,  whose  name  has  occurred  so 
often  in  Lamb's  letters  and  essays.  The  families  of  Nor- 
ris and  Lamb  were  united  by  more  than  one  bond  of  friend- 
ship. They  were  neighbours  in  the  Temple  for  many 
years,  and  Mrs.  Norris  was  a  native  of  Widford,  and  a 
friend  of  the  old  housekeeper  at  Blakesware.  And  now 
Charles  writes  to  Crabb  Robinson  to  tell  him  that  this, 
his  oldest  friend,  is  dying.  "  In  him  I  have  a  loss  the 
world  cannot  make  up.  He  was  my  friend  and  my  fa- 
ther's friend  all  the  life  I  can  remember.  I  seem  to  have 
made  foolish  friendships  ever  since.  These  are  friend- 
ships which  outlive  a  second  generation.  Old  as  I  am 
waxing,  in  his  eyes  I  was  still  the  child  he  first  knew  me. 
To  the  last  he  called  me  Charley.  I  have  none  to  call  me 
Charley  now.  He  was  the  last  link  that  bound  me  to  the 
Temple.  You  are  but  of  yesterday.  In  him  seem  to  have 
died  the  old  plainness  of  manners  and  singleness  of  heart." 
In  a  few  days  the  lingering  illness  was  over,  and  the  old 
friend  was  laid  to  rest  in  the  Temple  Church-yard. 

During  the  year  that  followed.  Lamb  found  a  congenial 
occupation,  and  a  healthy  substitute  for  his  old  regular 
hours,  in  working  daily  at  the  British  Museum.  He  wished 
to  assist  Hone,  the  editor  of  the  Every  Day  Book,  and 
undertook  to  make  extracts,  on  the  plan  of  his  former  vol- 
umes of  Dramatic  Specimens,  from  the  collection  of  plays 
bequeathed  by  Garrick  to  the  British  Museum,  for  publi- 
cation in  Hone's  Table  Book.  "  It  is  a  sort  of  ofiBce-work 
to  me,"  he  writes  to  Barton,  "  hours,  ten  to  four,  the  same. 
It  does  me  good.  Man  must  have  regular  occupation  that 
has  been  used  to  it."     The  extracts  thus  chosen  were  con- 


160  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

fessedly  but  gleanings  after  the  earlier  volumes,  and  in  the 
scanty  comments  prefixed  to  them  there  is  a  correspond- 
ing falling  oS  in  interest.  The  remark  upon  Gorbodue^ 
that  "  there  may  be  flesh  and  blood  underneath,  but  we 
cannot  get  at  it,"  shows  the  old  keenness  of  observation. 
And  it  is  pleasant  to  hear  him  repeat  once  more  that  the 
plays  of  Shakspeare  have  been  the  "  strongest  and  sweet- 
est food  of  his  mind  from  infancy."  But  the  real  impetus 
to  the  study  of  the  Great  Elizabethans  had  been  given  in 
the  volumes  of  1808. 

A  series  of  short  essays  contributed  in  this  same  year 
to  the  New  Monthly  Magazine,  under  the  title  of  Popular 
Fallacies,  are  for  the  most  part  of  slight  value.  The  one 
of  these  that  was  the  author's  favourite  is  suggested  by 
the  saying  that  **  Home  is  home,  though  it  is  never  so 
homely."  The  first  exception  that  he  propounds  to  the 
truth  of  this  maxim  is  in  the  case  of  the  "very  poor." 
To  places  of  cheap  entertainment,  and  the  benches  of  ale- 
houses. Lamb  says,  the  poor  man  "  resorts  for  an  image  of 
the  home  which  he  cannot  find  at  home."  Very  touch- 
ing is  the  picture  he  goes  on  to  draw  of  the  discrepancy 
between  the  "  humble  meal  shared  together,"  as  described 
by  the  sentimentalist,  and  the  grim  irony  of  the  actual 
facts.  "The  innocent  prattle  of  his  children  takes  out 
the  sting  of  a  man's  poverty.  But  the  children  of  the 
very  poor  do  not  prattle.  It  is  none  of  the  least  frightful 
features  in  that  condition  that  there  is  no  childishness  in 
its  dwellings.  Poor  people,  said  a  sensible  nurse  to  us 
once,  do  not  bring  up  their  children,  they  drag  them  up." 
The  whole  passage  is  in  a  strain  of  more  sustained  earnest- 
ness than  is  usual  with  Lamb,  and  serves  to  show  how 
widely  his  sympathetic  heart  had  travelled.  From  this 
theme  he  turns  to  one  which  touched  his  own  circum< 


VIII.]  ENFIELD  AND  EDMONTON.  161 

stances  more  nearly.  There  is  yet  another  home,  he  says, 
which  gives  the  lie  to  the  popular  saying.  It  may  have 
all  the  material  comforts  that  are  wanting  to  the  poor 
man,  all  its  fireside  conveniences,  and  yet  be  no  home. 
"  It  is  the  house  of  the  man  that  is  infested  with  many 
visitors."  And  he  goes  on  to  draw  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  noble-hearted  friends  that  are  always  welcome, 
and  the  purposeless  droppers  in  at  meal-time,  or  just  at 
the  moment  that  you  have  sat  down  to  a  book.  "  They 
have  a  peculiarily  compassionating  sneer  with  which  they 
hope  that  they  do  not  interrupt  your  studies."  It  is  Charles 
Lamb  himself  who  is  here  publishing  to  the  world  the  old 
grievance,  which  appears  so  constantly  in  his  letters.  He 
was  being  driven  from  Islington  by  the  crowd  of  callers 
and  droppers  in,  from  whom  he  professed  his  inability  to 
escape  in  any  other  way.  Hardly  is  he  settled  at  Enfield, 
in  August,  1827,  when  he  has  to  protest  that  the  swarm  of 
gnats  follows  him  from  place  to  place.  "  Whither  can  I 
take  wing,"  he  writes  to  Barton,  "  from  the  oppression  of 
human  faces  ?  Would  I  were  in  a  wilderness  of  apes,  toss- 
ing cocoa-nuts  about,  grinning  and  grinned  at !" 

There  is  reason  to  believe,  as  already  observed,  that 
Lamb  was  in  part  responsible  for  these  idle  trespassers 
upon  his  time.  He  had  not  had  the  courage  to  keep 
them  oflE  when  his  days  were  fully  occupied,  and  his  even- 
ings were  his  only  time  for  literature ;  and  now,  when  he 
passed  for  a  man  wholly  at  leisure,  it  was  not  likely  that 
the  annoyance  would  diminish.  But  the  truth  is,  there 
was  an  element  of  irritability  in  Lamb,  due  to  the  family 
temperament,  which  the  new  life,  though  he  could  now 
"  wander  at  his  own  sweet  will,"  was  little  calculated  to 
appease.  The  rest  of  which  he  dreamed,  when  he  retired 
in  the  prime  of  life  from  professional  work,  could  oul^ 


7 


16^  CHAHLES  LAMB.  [ohap. 

mean,  to  such  a  temperament  as  Lamb's,  restlessness.  He 
looked  for  relief  from  many  troubles  in  the  mere  circum* 
stance  of  change.  It  was  the  caelum,  non  animum,  disillu- 
sion that  so  many  have  had  to  experience.  And  at  the 
same  time  he  hated  having  to  break  with  old  associations, 
and  to  part  from  anything  to  which  he  had  been  long  ac- 
customed. When  he  moved  to  Enfield,  in  the  autumn  of 
1827,  he  wrote  to  Hood  that  he  had  had  "no  health"  at 
Islington,  and  having  found  benefit  from  previous  visits 
at  Enfield,  was  going  to  make  his  abode  there  altogether. 
But,  he  adds,  "  'twas  with  some  pain  we  were  evulsed  from 
Colebrook.  To  change  habitations  is  to  die  to  them ;  and 
in  my  time  I  have  died  seven  deaths.  But  I  don't  know 
whether  such  change  does  not  bring  with  it  a  rejuvenes- 
cence. 'Tis  an  enterprise ;  and  shoves  back  the  sense  of 
death's  approximating,  which  though  not  terrible  to  me,  is 
at  all  times  particularly  distasteful."  The  letter  ends  in  a 
more  cheerful  vein,  with  news  of  ten  pounds  a  year  less 
rent  than  at  Islington,  and  many  anticipations  of  occasion- 
al trips  to  London  "  to  breathe  the  fresher  air  of  the  me- 
tropolis," and  of  the  curds  and  cream  he  and  Mary  would 
set  before  Hood  and  Jerdan  and  other  London  friends  who 
might  visit  them  in  their  country  home.  Some  of  these 
joys  were  to  be  realized,  and  there  are  many  signs  of  the 
old  humour  and  fancy  not  having  been  altogether  banish- 
ed by  the  separation  from  London  interests  and  friends. 
Mrs.  Shelley  meets  him  in  town  in  August,  1828,  and  writes 
to  Leigh  Hunt :  "  On  my  return  to  the  Strand,  I  saw  Lamb, 
who  was  veiy  entertaining  and  amiable,  though  a  little 
deaf.  One  of  the  first  questions  he  asked  me  was,  wheth- 
er they  made  puns  in  Italy.  I  said  *Yes,  now  Hunt  is 
there.'  He  said  that  Burney  made  a  pun  in  Otaheite,  the 
first  that  ever  was  made  in  that  country.    At  first  the  na- 


vin.]  ENFIELD  AND  EDMONTON.  168 

tives  could  not  make  out  what  he  meant ;  but  all  at  once 
they  discovered  the  pun,  and  danced  round  him  in  trans- 
ports of  joy." 

Lamb's  work  in  literature  was  now  substantially  over, 
and  he  did  little  more  than  trifle  with  it,  pleasantly  and 
ingeniously,  for  the  last  few  years.  The  London  Magazine, 
after  a  long  decay,  and  many  changes  of  management, 
came  to  an  end  in  1826;  and  though  some  of  Lamb's 
later  contributions  to  the  New  Monthly  and  the  English' 
man's  Magazine  were  included  in  the  Last  Essays  of  Elia, 
collected  and  published  in  1833,  Elia  may  be  said  to  have 
been  born,  and  to  have  died,  with  the  London  Magazine. 
In  1828  he  wrote,  at  the  request  of  the  wife  of  Thomas 
Hood,  who  had  lately  lost  a  child,  the  well-known  lines, 
On  an  in/ant  dying  as  soon  as  born,  redolent  of  the  spirit 
and  fancy  of  Ben  Jonson  and  the  later  Elizabethans,  and 
though  written  to  order  showing  no  lack  of  spontaneity. 
He  continued  to  supply  his  young  lady  friends  with  acros- 
tics and  other  such  contributions  to  their  albums.  He 
suffered,  as  he  alleged,  terrible  things  from  albums  at  this 
time.  They  were  another  of  the  taxes  he  found  ruthless- 
ly exacted  from  "  retired  leisure."  He  writes  to  Procter 
in  1829: 

"  We  are  in  the  last  ages  of  the  world,  when  St.  Paul  prophesied 
that  women  should  be  '  headstrong,  lovers  of  their  own  wills,  having 
albums.'  I  fled  hither  to  escape  the  albumean  persecution,  and  had 
not  been  in  my  new  house  twenty-four  hours  when  the  daughter  of 
the  next  house  came  in  with  a  friend's  album  to  beg  a  contribution, 
and  the  following  day  intimated  she  had  one  of  her  own.  Two  more 
have  sprung  up  since.  If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning,  and  fly 
unto  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth,  there  will  albiuns  be.  New 
Holland  has  albums.    But  the  age  is  to  be  complied  with." 

He  so  far  complied  with  the  age  as  to  produce  enough, 
24 


154  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

with  a  few  occasional  verses  of  other  kinds,  to  make  a 
little  volume  for  his  friend  Moxon,  then  newly  starting 
as  a  publisher,  to  issue  in  appropriate  shape,  in  1830. 

The  "  new  house  "  spoken  of  in  the  letter  just  quoted 
was  the  Enfield  house  already  mentioned ;  but  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1829  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb  again  changed  their 
home.  The  sister's  illnesses  were  becoming  more  frequent 
and  more  protracted,  and  the  cares  of  housekeeping  weighed 
too  heavily  on  her.  Their  old  servant,  Becky,  had  mar- 
ried and  left  them,  and  they  were  little  contented  with 
her  successor.  There  is  a  gloomy  letter  of  Charles  to 
his  constant  correspondent  Barton,  in  July  of  this  year, 
telling  how  time  was  not  lightening  the  diflaculties  of  a 
man  with  no  settled  occupation.  He  had  been  paying 
a  visit  in  London,  but  even  London  was  not  what  it  had 
been: 

"  The  streets,  the  shops,  are  left,  but  all  old  friends  are  gone. . . . 
When  I  took  leave  of  our  adopted  young  friend  at  Charing  Cross, 
'twas  heavy,  unfeeling  rain,  and  I  had  nowhere  to  go.  Home  have 
I  none,  and  not  a  sympathizing  house  to  turn  to  in  the  great  city. 
Never  did  the  waters  of  heaven  pour  down  on  a  forlomer  head. . . . 
I  got  home  on  Thursday,  convinced  that  I  was  better  to  get  home  to 
my  home  at  Enfield,  and  hide  like  a  sick  cat  in  my  comer.  And  to 
make  me  more  alone,  our  ill-tempered  maid  is  gone,  who,  with  all  her 
airs,  was  yet  a  home-piece  of  furniture,  a  record  of  better  days ;  the 
young  thing  that  has  succeeded  her  is  good  and  attentive,  but  she  is 
nothing.  And  I  have  no  one  here  to  talk  over  old  matters  with.  .  . . 
What  I  can  do,  and  do  over-do,  is  to  walk ;  but  deadly  long  are  the 
days,  these  summer  all-day  days,  with  but  a  half -hour's  candle-light 
and  no  fire-light.  ...  I  pity  you  for  overwork,  but  I  assure  you  no 
work  is  worse.  The  mind  preys  on  itself — the  most  unwholesome 
food.  I  bragged  formerly  that  I  could  not  have  too  much  time.  I 
have  a  surfeit.  With  few  years  to  come,  the  days  are  wearisome. 
But  weariness  is  not  eternal.  Something  will  shine  out  to  take  the 
load  oS  that  flags  me,  which  is  at  present  intolerable.    I  have  killed 


Tni.]  ENFIELD  AND  EDMONTON.  165 

an  hour  or  two  in  this  poor  scrawl.  I  am  a  sanguinary  murderer  of 
time,  and  would  kill  him  inch-meal  just  now.  But  the  snake  is  vital. 
Well,  I  shall  write  merrier  anon." 

A  letter  of  a  week  or  two  before  had  given  sadder  rea- 
sons for  this  depression  of  spirits.  Mary  Lamb  had  again 
been  taken  ill,  and  it  had  been  necessary  to  remove  her 
from  home: 

"I  have  been  very  desolate  indeed.  My  loneliness  is  a  little 
abated  by  our  young  friend  Emma  having  just  come  here  for  her 
holidays,  and  a  schoolfellow  of  hers  that  was  with  her.  Still  the 
house  is  not  the  same,  though  she  is  the  same." 

It  was  these  repeated  illnesses  of  his  sister,  and  the  loss 
of  their  old  servant,  that  made  them  resolve  to  give  up 
house-keeping,  and  take  lodgings  next  door  ("Forty-two 
inches  nearer  town,"  Lamb  said),  with  an  old  couple,  a  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Westwood,  who  undertook  to  board  as  well  as 
lodge  them.  "  We  have  both  had  much  illness  this  year," 
he  wrote  to  a  friend, "  and  feeling  infirmities  and  fretf ul- 
ness  grow  upon  us,  we  have  cast  off  the  cares  of  house- 
keeping, sold  off  our  goods,  and  commenced  boarding  and 
lodging  with  a  very  comfortable  old  couple  next  door  to 
where  you  found  us.  We  use  a  sort  of  common  table. 
Nevertheless,  we  have  reserved  a  private  one  for  an  old 
friend."  In  less  than  a  week  he  was  able  to  report  the 
good  effect  of  the  change  upon  Mary.  "  She  looks  two 
and  a  half  years  younger  for  it.  But  we  have  had  sore 
trials." 

The  next  year  opens  with  a  letter  to  Wordsworth  de- 
scribing the  new  menage,  and  containing  a  charming  pict- 
ure of  the  old  couple  who  now  were  host  and  hostess  as 
well  as  landlords : 


156  CHARLES  LAMB,  [chap. 

"  Our  providers  are  an  honest  pair,  Dame  Westwood  and  her  hus- 
band ;  he,  when  the  hght  of  prosperity  shined  on  them,  a  moderately 
thriving  haberdasher  within  Bow  Bells,  retired  since  with  something 
under  a  competence ;  writes  himself  parcel  gentleman ;  hath  borne 
parish  oflSces ;  sings  fine  old  sea-songs  at  threescore  and  ten ;  sighs 
only  now  and  then  when  he  thinks  that  he  has  a  son  on  his  hands 
about  fifteen,  whom  he  finds  a  difficulty  in  getting  out  into  the  world ; 
and  then  checks  a  sigh  with  muttering,  as  I  once  heard  him  prettily, 
not  meaning  to  be  heard,  '  I  have  married  my  daughter,  however ;' 
takes  the  weather  as  it  comes ;  outsides  it  to  town  in  severest  season ; 
and  o'  winter  nights  tells  old  stories  not  tending  to  literature  (how 
comfortable  to  author-rid  folks !),  and  has  one  anecdote,  upon  which 
and  about  forty  pounds  a  year  he  seems  to  have  retired  in  green  old 
age." 

The  letter  gives  encouraging  news  of  his  sister's  health 
and  spirits,  but  the  loneliness  and  the  want  of  occupation 
are  pressing  heavily,  he  says,  upon  himself.  He  yearns 
for  London  and  the  cheerful  streets.  "  Let  no  native  Lon- 
doner imagine  that  health  and  rest,  innocent  occupation, 
interchange  of  converse  sweet,  and  recreative  study,  can 
make  the  country  anything  better  than  altogether  odious 
and  detestable."  Later,  in  March,  his  thoughts  are  divert- 
ed from  his  own  condition  by  the  illness  of  Miss  Isola; 
and  a  proposal  from  John  Murray  to  continue  the  Speci- 
mens of  the  Old  Dramatists  is  declined,  because  in  his  anx- 
iety for  their  young  protegee  he  could  think  of  nothing 
else.  Miss  Isola  happily  recovered.  Lamb  fetched  her 
from  Suffolk,  where  the  illness  had  occurred,  to  Enfield, 
and  it  was  on  the  journey  home  that  the  famous  stage- 
coach incident  occurred.  "  We  travelled  with  one  of  those 
troublesome  fellow-passengers  in  a  stage  coach  that  is  call- 
ed a  well-informed  man.  For  twenty  miles  we  discoursed 
about  the  properties  of  steam,  probabilities  of  carriage  by 
ditto,  till  all  my  science,  and  more  than  all,  was  exhausted, 
and  I  was  thinking  of  escaping  my  torment  by  getting  up 


vin.]  ENFIELD  AND  EDMONTON.  167 

on  the  outside,  when,  getting  into  Bishop  Stortford,  my 
gentleman,  spying  some  farming  land,  put  an  unlucky 
question  to  me:  '  What  sort  of  crop  of  turnips  I  thought 
we  should  have  this  year?'  Emma's  eyes  turned  to  me, 
to  know  what  in  the  world  I  could  have  to  say;  and  she 
burst  into  a  violent  fit  of  laughter,  maugre  her  pale  serious 
cheeks,  when  with  the  greatest  gravity  I  replied  that  '  It 
depended,  I  believed,  upon  boiled  legs  of  mutton.' " 

There  is  little  to  record  of  incident  or  change  in  these 
last  years  of  the  life,  now  more  and  more  lonely,  of 
brother  and  sister.  A  small  volume  of  occasional  poetry. 
Album  Verses — the  amusements  of  the  latter  years  of  leis- 
ure— was  produced  by  Mr.  Moxon  in  1830,  but  contains 
little  to  call  for  remark;  and  another  venture  of  Mr. 
Moxon's,  The  Englishman's  Magazine,  in  the  following 
year,  drew  from  Lamb  some  prose  contributions,  under 
the  heading  of  Peter's  Net.  In  1833,  the  Lambs  made 
their  last  change  of  residence.  Their  furniture  had  been 
disposed  of  when  they  settled  at  Enfield,  and  they  now 
entered  on  an  arrangement  similar  to  the  last,  of  boarding 
and  lodging  with  another  married  pair — younger,  how- 
ever, and  more  active — a  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Walden,  of  Bay 
Cottage,  in  the  neighbouring  parish  of  Edmonton.  The 
reasons  for  the  change  are  of  the  old  sad  kind.  A  let- 
ter to  Wordsworth,  of  May,  1833,  tells  the  melancholy 
story :  "  Mary  is  ill  again.  Her  illnesses  encroach  yearly. 
The  last  was  three  months,  followed  by  two  of  depression 
most  dreadful.  I  look  back  upon  her  earlier  attacks  with 
longing.  Nice  little  durations  of  six  weeks  or  so,  fol- 
lowed by  complete  restoration,  shocking  as  they  were  to 
me  then.  In  short,  half  her  life  is  dead  to  me,  and  the 
other  half  is  made  anxious  with  fears  and  lookings  for- 
ward to  the  next  shock."     Mary  Lamb  had  been  on  for- 


168  CHARLES  LAMB.  [ciup. 

mer  occasions  of  illness  under  the  care  of  the  Waldens,  and 
the  increasing  frequency  of  her  attacks  made  this  change 
necessary  in  the  interest  of  both  brother  and  sister.  It 
secured  for  Mary  the  constant  supervision  of  an  attendant. 
The  same  letter  tells  of  an  additional  element  of  lone- 
liness that  was  in  store  for  them.  Emma  Isola  was  en- 
gaged "  with  my  perfect  approval  and  entire  concurrence  " 
to  Mr.  Moxon,  the  publisher,  and  the  wedding  was  fixed. 
Lamb  writes  of  it  with  the  old  habitual  unselfishness, 
though  it  was  to  leave  him  without  his  "  only  walk-com- 
panion, whose  mirthful  spirits  were  the  'youth  of  our 
house.'"  He  turns,  after  his  manner,  to  think  of  his 
compensations.  He  is  emancipated  from  Enfield,  with 
attentive  people  and  younger,  and  what  is  more,  is  three 
or  four  miles  nearer  to  his  beloved  town.  Miss  Isola  was 
married  on  the  30th  of  July,  and  it  is  pleasant  to  know 
that  though  up  to  the  very  day  of  the  wedding  Mary 
Lamb  had  been  unable  to  interest  herself  in  the  event,  and 
was  of  course  unable  to  be  present  at  the  ceremony,  she 
attributes  her  recovery  from  this  attack  to  the  stimulus  of 
the  good  news  suddenly  communicated.  There  is  a  pa- 
thetic note  of  congratulation  from  her  to  the  newly-mar- 
ried pair,  in  which  she  tells  them  of  this  with  characteris- 
tic simplicity.  The  Waldens  had  with  happy  tact  pro- 
posed Mr.  and  Mrs.  Moxon's  health,  at  their  quiet  meal. 
"  It  restored  me  from  that  moment,"  writes  Mary  Lamb, 
"  as  if  by  an  electrical  stroke,  to  the  entire  possession  of 
my  senses.  I  never  felt  so  calm  and  quiet  after  a  similar 
illness  as  I  do  now.  I  feel  as  if  all  tears  were  wiped  from 
my  eyes,  and  all  care  from  my  heart."  And  Charles  is 
able  to  add,  in  a  postscript,  how  they  are  again  happy  in 
their  old  pursuits — cards,  walks,  and  reading :  "  never  wa» 
such  a  calm,  or  such  a  recovery." 


vra.]  ENFIELD  AND  EDMONTON.  169 

In  this  year  1833  the  later  essays  of  Lamb  contributed 
to  the  London  Magazine,  together  with  some  shorter 
pieces  from  other  periodicals,  were  published  by  Mr. 
Moxon,  under  the  title  of  the  Last  Essays  of  Elia,  and 
with  this  event  the  literary  life  of  Lamb  was  destined  to 
close.  Nothing  more,  beyond  an  occasional  copy  of  verses 
for  a  friend,  came  from  his  pen.  Notwithstanding  the 
increasing  illness  of  his  sister,  he  was  able  to  enjoy  some 
cheerful  society,  notably  with  a  friend  of  recent  date, 
Mr.  Gary,  the  translator  of  Dante,  with  whom  he  dined 
periodically  at  the  British  Museum.'  Mr.  John  Forster, 
afterwards  to  be  known  widely  as  the  author  of  the  Life 
of  Goldsmith,  was  another  accession  to  his  list  of  congenial 
friends.  But  these  could  not  make  compensation  for  the 
loss  of  the  old.  Lamb  was  not  yet  sixty  years  of  age, 
but  he  was  without  those  ties  and  relationships  which 
more  than  all  else  we  know  bring  "forward-looking 
thoughts."  His  life  was  lived  chiefly  in  the  past,  and  one 
by  one  "the  old  familiar  faces"  were  passing  away.  In 
July,  1834,  Coleridge  died,  after  many  months  of  suffer- 
ing. For  the  last  eighteen  years  of  his  life  he  had  resided 
beneath  Mr.  Gillman's  roof  at  Highgate,  and  Charles  and 
Mary  Lamb  were  among  the  most  welcome  visitors  at  the 
house :  and  now  the  friendship  of  fifty  years  was  at  an 
end.  All  the  little  asperities  of  early  rivalry  ;  all  the  nat- 
ural regrets  at  sight  of  a  life  so  wasted — powers  so  vast 
ending  in  performance  so  inadequate — a  spirit  so  willing, 
and  a  will  so  weak — were  forgotten  now.  Lamb  had  never 
spared  the  foibles  of  his  old  companion ;  when  Coleridge 
had  soared  to  his  highest  metaphysical  flights  he  had 
apologized  for  him — "  Yes !  you  know  Coleridge  is  so  full 
of  his  fun ;" — he  had  described  him  as  an  "  archangel,  a 
little  damaged ;" — but  the  indescribable  moral  afflatus  felt 


160  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

through  Coleridge's  obscurest  rhapsodies  had  been  among 
the  best  influences  on  Charles  Lamb's  life.  A  few  months 
later  he  tried  to  put  his  regrets  and  his  obligations  into 
words.  "  When  I  heard  of  the  death  of  Coleridge,  it  was 
without  grief.  It  seemed  to  me  that  he  had  long  been  on 
the  confines  of  the  next  world — that  he  had  a  hunger  for 
eternity.  I  grieved  then  that  I  could  not  grieve;  but 
since,  I  feel  how  great  a  part  he  was  of  me.  His  great 
and  dear  spirit  haunts  me.  I  cannot  think  a  thought,  I 
cannot  make  a  criticism  on  men  or  books,  without  an  in- 
effectual turning  and  reference  to  him.  He  was  the  proof 
and  touchstone  of  all  my  cogitations." 

The  death  of  his  friend  was  Charles  Lamb's  death- 
blow. There  had  been  two  persons  in  the  world  for  whom 
he  would  have  wished  to  live — Coleridge  and  his  sister 
Mary.  The  latter  was  now  for  the  greater  part  of  each 
year  worse  than  dead  to  him.  The  former  was  gone,  and 
the  blank  left  him  helplessly  alone.  In  conversation  with 
friends  he  would  suddenly  exclaim,  as  if  with  surprise 
that  aught  else  in  the  world  should  interest  him,  "Cole- 
ridge is  dead !"  And  within  five  weeks  of  the  day  when 
the  touching  tribute  just  cited  was  committed  to  paper, 
he  was  called  to  join  his  friend.  One  day  in  the  middle 
of  December,  as  he  was  taking  his  usual  walk  along  the 
London  road,  his  foot  struck  against  a  stone,  and  he 
stumbled  and  fell,  inflicting  a  slight  wound  on  his  face. 
For  some  days  the  injury  appeared  trifling,  and  on  the 
22nd  of  the  month  he  writes  a  cheerful  note  to  the  wife 
of  his  old  friend  George  Dyer,  concerning  the  safety  of  a 
certain  book  belonging  to  Mr.  Cary,  which  he  had  left  at 
her  house.  On  the  same  day,  however,  symptoms  of  ery- 
sipelas supervened,  and  it  soon  became  evident  that  his 
general  health  was  too  feeble  to  resist  the  attack.     From 


VIII.]  ENFIELD  AND  EDMONTON.  161 

the  first  appearance  of  the  disease  the  failure  of  life  was 
so  rapid  that  his  intimate  friends,  Talfourd  and  Crabb 
Robinson,  did  not  reach  his  bedside  in  time  for  him  to 
recognize  them.  The  few  words  that  escaped  his  lips 
while  his  mind  was  still  unclouded  conveyed  to  those  wha 
watched  him  that  he  was  undisturbed  at  the  prospect  of 
death.  His  sister  was,  happily  for  herself,  in  no  state  to 
feel  or  appreciate  the  blow  that  was  falling.  On  the  27th 
of  December,  murmuring  in  his  last  moments  the  names 
of  his  dearest  friends,  he  passed  tranquilly  out  of  life. 
"On  the  following  Saturday  his  remains  were  laid  in  a 
deep  grave  in  Edmonton  church-yard,  made  in  a  spot 
which,  about  a  fortnight  before,  he  had  pointed  out  to  his 
sister,  on  an  afternoon  wintry  walk,  as  the  place  where  he 
wished  to  be  buried." 

There  is  a  touching  fitness  in  the  circumstance  that 
Charles  Lamb  could  not  longer  survive  his  earliest  and 
dearest  friend — that,  trying  it  for  a  little  while,  "  he  liked 
it  not — and  died."  It  was  a  fitting  comment  on  the  cir- 
cumstance, that  that  other  great  poet  and  thinker  who 
next  to  Coleridge  shared  Lamb's  deepest  pride  and  affec- 
tion, as  he  looked  back  a  year  afterwards  on  the  gaps  that 
death  had  made  in  the  ranks  of  those  he  loved,  should  have 
once  more  linked  their  names  in  imperishable  verse : 

"  Nor  has  the  rolling  year  twice  measured 
From  sign  to  sign  its  steadfast  course, 
Since  every  mortal  power  of  Coleridge 
Was  frozen  at  its  marvellous  source. 

"  The  rapt  one  of  the  godlike  forehead, 
The  heaven-eyed  creature,  sleeps  in  earth : 
And  Lamb,  the  frolic  and  the  gentle, 
Has  vanished  from  his  lonely  hearth." 


162  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

The  friends  of  Lamb  were  not  slow  in  giving  expression 
to  their  sorrow  for  his  loss,  and  their  admiration  of  his 
character — Wordsworth  and  Landor  in  verse,  Procter, 
Moxon,  Forster,  and  many  others  through  various  channels, 
in  prose.  For  the  most  part  they  had  to  deal  in  generali- 
ties, for  Mary  Lamb  still  lived,  and  the  full  extent  of  her 
brother's  devotion  and  sacrifice  could  not  yet  be  told. 
But  abundant  testimony  was  forthcoming  that  (to  borrow 
Landor's  words)  he  had  left  behind  him  that  "  worthier 
thing  than  tears," 

"  The  love  of  friends,  without  a  single  foe." 

Wordsworth,  in  a  beautiful  tribute  to  his  friend,  begun 

with  some  view  to  an  inscription  for  his  grave,  expressed 

no  more  than  the  verdict  of  all  who  knew  him  well,  when 

he  wrote, 

"  Oh,  he  was  good,  if  ever  good  man  was." 

And  yet  there  must  have  been  many  of  his  old  acquaint- 
ances who  were  startled  at  finding  admiration  for  him  thus 
expressed.  Those  who  were  not  aware  of  the  conditions 
of  his  life,  or  knew  him  only  on  his  ordinary  convivial  side, 
regarded  him,  we  are  assured,  as  a  flippant  talker,  reckless 
indeed  in  speech,  moody,  and  of  uncertain  temper.  Few 
could  know  what  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  and  Southey 
knew  so  well,  that  with  all  his  boastful  renunciation  of 
orthodoxy  in  belief,  and  his  freedom  of  criticism  on  relig- 
ious matters,  he  was  one  capable  of  feeling  keenly  both  the 
sentiment  and  the  principle  of  religious  trust.  There  is 
ample  evidence  of  this  in  those  early  letters  written  in  the 
darkest  hours  of  his  life.  And  though  the  sentiment 
waned  as  a  different  class  of  associates  gathered  round 
him,  and  there  were  few  at  hand  with  whom  to  inter- 
change his  deeper  thoughts,  religion  in  him  never  died, 


vm,]  fiNFIELD  AND  EDMONTON.  16S 

but  became  a  habit — a  habit  of  enduring  hardness,  and 
cleaving  to  the  steadfast  performance  of  duty  in  face  of 
the  strongest  allurements  to  the  pleasanter  and  easier 
course.  He  set  himself  a  task,  one  of  the  saddest  and 
hardest  that  can  be  undertaken,  to  act  as  guardian  and 
companion  to  one  living  always  on  the  brink  of  insanity. 
For  eight-and-thirty  years  he  was  faithful  to  this  purpose, 
giving  up  everything  for  it,  and  never  thinking  that  he 
had  done  enough,  or  could  do  enough,  for  his  early  friend, 
his  "  guardian  angel." 

It  is  noteworthy  that  those  surface  qualities  of  Charles 
Lamb,  by  which  so  many  were  content  to  judge  him,  were 
just  those  which  men  are  slow  to  connect  with  sterling 
goodness  such  as  this.  There  was  a  certain  Bohemianism 
in  him,  it  must  be  allowed  —  a  fondness  for  overmuch 
tobacco  and  gin-and-water,  and  for  the  company  of  those 
whom  more  particular  people  looked  shy  upon.  He  often 
fretted  against  the  loss  of  time  they  caused  him,  but  he 
was  tolerant  for  the  moment  of  what  fed  his  sense  of 
humour  or  fancy,  and  always  of  that  which  touched  the 
"  virtue  of  compassion  "  in  him.  He  was  free  of  speech, 
and  not  in  the  least  afraid  of  shocking  his  company.  And 
it  seems  a  natural  inference  that  such  traits  betoken  a 
hand-to-mouth  existence,  a  certain  want  of  moral  backbone, 
irregularity  in  money  matters,  and  the  absence  of  any  set- 
tled purpose.  Yet  it  was  for  the  opposite  of  all  this  that 
Lamb's  life  is  so  notable.  He  was  well  versed  in  poverty 
— for  some  years  in  marked  degree — but  he  seems  never 
to  have  exceeded  his  income,  or  to  have  been  in  debt.  In 
the  days  of  his  most  straitened  means  he  was  never  so 
poor  but  that  he  had  in  reserve  something  to  help  those 
poorer  than  himself.  His  letters  show  this  throughout; 
and  as  his  own  fortunes  mended,  his  generosity  in  giving 


164  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

becomes  truly  surprising.  "  He  gave  away  greatly, ^^  says 
his  friend  Mr.  Procter,  and  goes  on  to  relate  how  on  one 
occasion  when  he  was  in  low  spirits,  and  Lamb  imagined 
that  it  might  proceed  from  pecuniary  causes,  he  said,  sud- 
denly, "  My  dear  boy,  I  have  a  quantity  of  useless  things — 
I  have  now  in  my  desk  a — a  hundred  pounds — that  I 
don't  know  what  to  do  with.  Take  it."  In  his  more 
prosperous  days  he  always  had  pensioners  on  his  bounty. 
For  many  years  he  allowed  his  old  school-mistress  thirty 
pounds  a  year.  To  a  friend  of  Southey's,  who  was  para- 
lyzed, he  paid  ten  pounds  yearly ;  and  when  a  subscription 
was  raised  for  Godwin  in  his  gravest  difficulties.  Lamb's 
contribution  was  the  munificent  one  of  fifty  pounds.  His 
letters,  too,  prove  that  he  could  always  make  the  more  dif- 
ficult sacrifices  of  time  and  thought  when  others  were  in 
need.  For  a  young  lady  establishing  a  school — for  a  poor 
fellow  seeking  an  occasional  clerkship  in  the  India  House 
— for  such  as  these  he  is  continually  pleading  and  taking 
trouble.  And  before  he  knew  that  the  directors  of  the 
India  House  intended  to  provide  for  his  sister,  in  the 
event  of  her  surviving  him,  on  the  footing  of  a  wife,  he 
had  managed  to  put  by  a  suflBcient  sum  to  place  her  be- 
yond the  reach  of  want.  At  his  death  he  left  a  sum  of 
two  thousand  pounds,  for  his  sister  during  her  life,  with 
a  reversion  to  the  child  of  their  adoption,  Emma  Isola, 
then  Mrs.  Moxon. 

Mary  Lamb  survived  her  brother  nearly  thirteen  years, 
dying  at  the  advanced  age  of  82,  on  the  20th  of  May, 
1847.  After  the  death  of  Charles,  her  health  rallied  suf- 
ficiently for  her  to  visit  occasionally  among  their  old 
friends;  but  as  years  passed,  her  attacks  became  still 
more  frequent,  and  of  longer  duration,  till  her  mind  be- 
came permanently  enfeebled.    After  leaving  Edmonton, 


Tin.]  ENFIELD  AND  EDMONTON.  166 

she  lived  chiefly  at  St.  John's  Wood,  ander  the  care  of  a 
nurse.  Her  pension,  together  with  the  income  from  her 
brother's  savings,  was  amply  sufficient  for  her  few  needs. 

"  She  will  live  for  ever  in  the  memory  of  her  friends," 
writes  that  true  and  faithful  friend,  Crabb  Robinson,  "as 
one  of  the  most  amiable  and  admirable  of  women."  From 
this  verdict  there  is  no  dissentient  voice.  With  much  less 
from  which  to  form  a  direct  opinion  than  in  her  brother's 
case,  we  seem  to  read  her  character  almost  equally  well. 
The  tributes  of  her  brother  scattered  through  essay  and 
letter,  her  own  few  but  very  significant  letters,  and  her 
contributions  to  literature,  show  her  strong  and  healthy 
common-sense,  her  true  womanliness,  and  her  gift  of  keen 
and  active  sympathy.  She  shared  with  Charles  a  love  of 
Quaker-like  colour  and  homeliness  in  dress.  "She  wore 
a  neat  cap,"  Mr.  Procter  tells  us,  "  of  the  fashion  of  her 
yonth;  an  old-fashioned  dress.  Her  face  was  pale  and 
somewhat  square,  but  very  placid,  with  grey  intelligent 
eyes.  She  was  very  mild  in  her  manners  to  strangers; 
and  to  her  brother,  gentle  and  tender,  always.  She  had 
often  an  upward  look  of  peculiar  meaning  when  directed 
towards  him,  as  though  to  give  him  assurance  that  all  was 
then  well  with  her."  This  unvarying  manner,  betokening 
mutual  dependence  and  interest,  was  the  feature  that  most 
impressed  all  who  watched  them  together,  her  eyes  often 
fixed  on  his  as  on  "  some  adoring  disciple,"  and  ever  lis- 
tening to  help  his  speech  in  some  difficult  word,  and  to 
anticipate  the  coming  need.  He  in  turn  was  always  on 
the  watch  to  detect  any  sign  in  her  face  of  failing  health 
or  spirits,  and  to  divert  the  conversation,  if  occasion  arose, 
from  any  topic  that  might  distress  her  or  set  np  some 
dangerous  excitement.  Among  the  strange  and  motley 
guests  that  their  hospitality  brought  around  them,  her  own 
8* 


166  CHARLES  LAMB.  [ohat. 

opinions  and  habits  remained,  with  little  danger  of  being 
shaken.  "  It  has  been  the  lot  of  my  cousin,"  writes  Lamb 
in  the  essay  Mackery  End,  "  oftener  perhaps  than  I  could 
have  wished,  to  have  had  for  her  associates,  and  mine,  free 
thinkers,  leaders  and  disciples  of  novel  philosophies  and 
systems;  but  she  neither  wrangles  with,  nor  accepts  their 
opinions.  That  which  was  good  and  venerable  to  her 
when  she  was  a  child,  retains  its  authority  over  her  mind 
still.  She  never  juggles  or  plays  tricks  with  her  under- 
standing." It  was  this  element  of  quietism  in  Mary  Lamb 
that  made  her  so  inestimable  a  companion  for  her  brother. 
She  was  strong  where  he  was  weak,  and  reposeful  where 
he  was  so  often  ill  at  ease. 

She  was  indeed  fitted  in  all  respects  to  be  Charles 
Lamb's  life -long  companion.  She  shared  his  worthiest 
tastes,  to  the  full.  More  catholic  in  her  partialities  than 
he,  she  devoured  modern  books  as  well  as  ancient  with 
unfailing  appetite,  and  had  formed  out  of  her  reading  a 
pure  and  idiomatic  English  style,  with  just  a  touch,  as 
in  everything  else  belonging  to  her,  of  an  old-world  for- 
mality. She  possessed  a  distinct  gift  of  humour,  as  her 
portion  of  Mrs.  Leicester's  School  amply  shows.  The 
story  of  the  Father'' s  Wedding-day  has  strokes  of  humour 
and  observation  not  unworthy  of  Goldsmith.  Landor 
used  to  rave,  with  characteristic  vehemence,  about  this 
little  sketch,  and  to  declare  that  the  incident  of  the  child 
wishing,  when  dressed  in  her  new  frock,  that  her  poor 
"  mamma  was  alive,  to  see  how  fine  she  was  on  papa's 
wedding-day,"  was  a  masterpiece.  The  story  called  The 
Young  Mahometan  has  a  special  interest  as  containing 
yet  one  more  recollection  of  the  old  house  at  Blakesware. 
The  medallions  of  the  Twelve  Caesars,  the  Hogarth  prints, 
and  the  tapestry  hangings,  are  all  there,  together  with  that 


▼III.]  ENFIELD  AND  EDMONTON.  1«7 

picturesque  incident,  which  Charles  elsewhere  has  not  over- 
looked, of  the  broken  battledore  and  shuttlecock,  telling 
of  happy  children's  voices  that  had  once  echoed  through 
the  lonely  chambers.  It  is  certain  that  Charles  and  Mary, 
ardently  as  they  both  clung  in  after  years  to  London  sight8 
and  sounds,  owed  much  both  in  genius  and  character  to 
having  breathed  the  purer,  calmer  air  of  rural  homesteads. 
A  common  education,  whether  that  of  sweet  garden 
scenes,  or  the  choice  fancies  and  meditations  of  poet  and 
moralist — a  sense  of  mutual  need — a  profound  pity  for 
each  other's  frailties — of  these  was  forged  the  bond  that 
held  them,  and  years  of  suffering  and  self-denial  had  made 
it  ever  more  and  more  strong.  "That  we  had  much  to 
struggle  with,  as  we  grew  up  together,  we  have  reason  to 
be  most  thankful.  It  strengthened  and  knit  our  compact 
closer.  We  could  never  have  been  what  we  have  been 
to  each  other,  if  we  had  always  had  the  suflBciency  which 
you  now  complain  of."  It  is  with  these  words  of  divine 
philosophy  that,  when  comparative  ease  had  at  last  been 
achieved,  Charles  Lamb  could  look  back  upon  the  anxious 
past. 

M 


CHAPTER  IX. 

lamb's  place  as  a  critic. 

It  remains  to  speak  of  those  prose  writings  of  Lamb, 
many'  of  earlier  date  than  the  Essays  of  Mia,  by  which 
his  quality  as  a  critic  must  be  determined.  As  early  as 
1811  he  had  published  in  Leigh  Hunt's  Reflector  his  essay 
on  The  Genius  and  Character  of  Hogarth.  This  was  no 
subject  taken  up  for  the  occasion.  "  His  graphic  repre- 
sentations," says  Lamb,  "  are  indeed  books :  they  have  the 
teeming,  fruitful,  suggestive  meaning  of  words'''' — and  no 
book  was  more  familiar  to  him.  A  set  of  Hogarth's  prints, 
including  the  Harlofs  and  Hake's  Progresses,  had  been 
among  the  treasures  of  the  old  house  at  Blakesware ;  and 
Lamb  as  a  child  had  spelled  through  their  grim  and  ghast- 
ly histories  again  and  again,  till  he  came  to  know  every 
figure  and  incident  in  them  by  heart.  And  now  the  cava- 
lier tone  in  which  certain  leaders  of  the  classical  and  histori- 
cal schools  of  painting  were  wont  to  dismiss  Hogarth  as 
of  slight  value  in  point  of  art,  made  him  keen  to  vindicate 
his  old  favourite.  He  has  scant  patience  with  those  who 
noted  defective  drawing  or  "  knowledge  of  the  figure  "  in 
the  artist.  He  is  intolerant  altogether  of  technical  criti- 
cism. The  essay  is  devoted  to  showing  how  true  a  moral- 
ist the  painter  is,  and  how  false  the  view  which  would  re- 
gard him  chiefly  as  a  humourist.    He  is  a  great  satirist — a 


CHAP.ix]  LAMB'S  PLACE  AS  A  CRITIC.  169 

Juvenal  or  a  Persius.  Moreover,  he  is  a  combination  of 
satirist  and  dramatist.  Hogarth  had  claimed  for  his  pict- 
ures that  they  should  be  judged  as  successive  scenes  in  a 
play,  and  Lamb  takes  him  at  his  word.  He  is  carried 
away  by  admiration  for  the  tragic  power  displayed.  He 
is  in  ecstasies  over  the  print  of  Gin  Lane,  certainly  one  of 
the  poorest  of  Hogarth's  pictures  as  a  composition,  losing 
its  due  effect  by  overcrowding  of  incident,  and  made  gro- 
tesque through  sheer  exaggeration.  Yet,  what  stirs  the 
critic's  heart  is  "  the  pity  of  it,"  and  he  is  in  no  humour 
to  admit  other  considerations.  He  calls  it  "a  sublime 
print."  ."Every  part  is  full  of  strange  images  of  death; 
it  is  perfectly  amazing  and  astounding  to  look  at ;"  and 
so  forth.  It  is  noticeable  that  Lamb  does  not  write  with 
the  pictures  before  him,  and  trusts  to  a  memory  not  quite 
trustworthy.  For  example,  to  prove  that  Hogarth  is  not 
merely  repulsive,  that  there  is  always  a  sweet  humanity  in 
reserve  as  a  foil  for  the  horrors  he  deals  with — something 
to  "  keep  the  general  air  from  tainting,"  he  says :  "  Take 
the  mild,  supplicating  posture  of  patient  poverty,  in  the 
poor  woman  that  is  persuading  the  pawnbroker  to  accept 
her  clothes  in  pledge  in  the  plate  of  Gin  Lane.''''  There  is 
really  no  such  incident  in  the  picture.  There  is  a  woman 
offering  in  pawn  her  kettle  and  fire-irons;  but,  taken  in 
combination  with  all  the  other  incidents  of  the  scene,  she 
is  certainly  pledging  them  to  buy  gin.  Here,  as  elsewhere, 
Lamb  damages  his  case  by  over-statement,  partly  through 
love  of  surprises,  partly  because  he  willingly  discovered  in 
poem  or  picture  what  he  wished  to  find  there.  He  sees 
more  of  humanity  and  sweetness  in  what  affects  him  than 
is  actually  present.  He  reads  something  of  himself  into 
the  composition  he  is  reviewing.  He  is  on  safer  ground 
when  he  dwells  on  the  genuine  power,  the  pity  and  the 
25 


170  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

terror,  in  that  last  scene  but  one  of  The  Marriage-a-la- 
Mode ;  and  on  the  gentleness  of  the  wife's  countenance, 
poetizing  the  whole  scene,  in  the  print  of  The  Distressed 
Poet.  And  he  is  doing  a  service  to  art  of  larger  scope 
than  fixing  the  respective  ranks  of  Hogarth  and  Poussin, 
in  these  noble  concluding  lines : 

"  I  say  not  that  all  the  ridiculous  subjects  of  Hogarth  have  neces- 
sarily something  in  them  to  make  us  like  them  ;  some  are  indifferent 
to  us,  some  in  their  natures  repulsive,  and  only  made  interesting  by 
the  wonderful  skill  and  truth  to  nature  in  the  painter ;  but  I  contend 
that  there  is  in  most  of  them  that  sprinkling  of  the  better  nature 
which,  like  holy  water,  chases  away  and  disperses  the  contagion  of 
the  bad.  They  have  this  in  them  besides,  that  they  bring  us  ac- 
quainted with  the  every-day  human  face ;  they  give  us  skill  to  detect 
those  gradations  of  sense  and  virtue  (which  escape  the  careless  or 
fastidious  observer)  in  the  countenances  of  the  world  about  us ;  and 
prevent  that  disgust  at  common  life,  that  tcedium  quotidianarum  for- 
marum,  which  an  unrestricted  passion  for  ideal  forms  and  beauties  is 
in  danger  of  producing." 

His  judgments  of  pictures  are,  as  might  be  expected, 
those  of  a  man  of  letters,  not  of  a  painter.  It  is  the  story 
in  the  picture  that  impresses  him,  and  the  technical  quali- 
ties leave  him  unmoved.  A  curious  instance  of  this  is  af- 
forded in  his  essay  on  The  Barrenness  of  the  Imaginative 
Faculty  in  the  Productions  of  Modern  Art.  After  com- 
plaining that,  with  the  exception  of  Hogarth,  no  artist 
within  the  last  fifty  years  had  treated  a  story  imaginative- 
ly— "upon  whom  his  subject  has  so  acted  that  it  has 
seemed  to  direct  him,  not  to  be  arranged  by  him  " — he 
breaks  out  into  a  fine  rhapsody  on  the  famous  Bacchus 
and  Ariadne  of  Titian  in  the  National  Gallery.  But  it  is 
not  as  a  masterpiece  of  colour  and  drawing  that  it  excites 
his  admiration.     The  qualities  of  the  poet,  not  those  of 


IX.]  LAMB'S  PLACE  AS  A  CRITIO.  171 

the  painter,  are  what  he  discovers  in  it.  It  is  the  "  imag- 
inative faculty  "  which  he  detects,  as  shown  in  the  power 
of  uniting  the  past  and  the  present.  "  Precipitous,  with  his 
reeling  satyr-rout  around  him,  re-peopling  and  re-illuming 
suddenly  the  waste  places,  drunk  with  a  new  fury  beyond 
the  grape,  Bacchus,  born  of  fire,  fire-like  flings  himself  at 
the  Cretan:"  this  is  the  present.  Ariadne,  "unconscious 
of  Bacchus,  or  but  idly  casting  her  eyes  as  upon  some  un- 
concern ing  pageant,  her  soul  undistracted  from  Theseus  " 
— Ariadne,  "  pacing  the  solitary  shore  in  as  much  heart- 
silence,  and  in  almost  the  same  local  solitude,  with  which 
she  awoke  at  daybreak  to  catch  the  forlorn  last  glances 
of  the  sail  that  bore  away  the  Athenian :"  this  is  the  past. 
But  it  is  in  the  situation  itself,  not  in  Titian's  treatment 
of  it,  that  Lamb  has  found  the  antithesis  that  so  delights 
him.  He  is  in  fact  the  poet,  taking  the  subject  out  of  the 
painter's  hands,  and  treating  it  afresh.  Lamb  obtains  an 
easy  victory  for  the  ancients  over  the  moderns,  by  choos- 
ing as  his  foil  for  Titian  and  Raffaelle  the  treatment  of  sa- 
cred subjects  by  Martin,  the  painter  of  Belshazzar' s  Feast 
and  The  Plains  of  Heaven.  And  it  is  significant  of  a  cer- 
tain inability  in  Lamb  to  do  full  justice  to  his  contempo- 
raries, that  in  noting  the  barrenness  of  the  fifty  years  in 
question  in  the  matter  of  art,  he  has  no  exception  to  make 
but  Hogarth.  He  might  have  had  a  word  to  say  for 
Turner  and  Wilkie. 

The  essay  on  The  Artificial  Comedy  of  the  Last  Centu- 
ry has  received  more  attention  than  its  importance  at  all 
warrants,  from  the  circumstance  that  Macaulay  set  to  work 
seriously  to  demolish  its  reasoning,  in  reviewing  Leigh 
Hunt's  edition  of  the  Restoration  Dramatists.  Lamb's 
essay  was  originally  part  of  a  larger  essay  upon  the  old 
actors,  in  which  he  was  led  to  speak  of  the  comedies  of 


in  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chaf. 

Congreve  and  Wycherley,  and  the  reasons  why  they  no 
longer  held  the  stage.  His  line  of  defence  is  well  known. 
He  protests  that  the  world  in  which  their  characters  move 
is  so  wholly  artificial — a  conventional  world,  quite  apart 
from  that  of  real  life — that  it  is  beside  the  mark  to  judge 
them  by  any  moral  standard.  "  They  are  a  world  of  them- 
selves almost  as  much  as  fairy-land."  The  apology  is  real- 
ly (as  Hartley  Coleridge  acutely  points  out)  for  those  who, 
like  himself,  could  enjoy  the  wit  of  these  writers,  without 
finding  their  actual  judgment  of  moral  questions  at  all  in- 
fluenced by  it.  It  must  be  admitted  that  Lamb  does  not 
convince  us  of  the  sincerity  of  his  reasoning,  and  probably 
he  did  not  convince  himself.  He  loved  paradox ;  and  he 
loved,  moreover,  to  find  some  soul  of  goodness  in  things 
evil.  As  Hartley  Coleridge  adds,  it  was  his  way  always 
to  take  hold  of  things  "  by  the  better  handle." 

The  same  love  of  paradox  is  manifest  in  the  essay  on 
Shakspeare's  Tragedies, "  considered  with  reference  to  their 
fitness  for  stage  representation."  If  there  are  any  posi- 
tions which  we  should  not  expect  to  find  Lamb  disput- 
ing, they  are  the  acting  qualities  of  Shakspeare's  plays, 
and  the  intellectual  side  of  the  actor's  art.  Yet  these  are 
what  he  devotes  this  paper  to  impugning.  He  had  been 
much  disgusted  by  the  fulsome  flattery  contained  in  the 
epitaph  on  Garrick  in  Westminster  Abbey.  In  this  bom- 
bastic effusion,  this  "  farrago  of  false  thoughts  and  non- 
sense," as  Lamb  calls  it,  Garrick  is  put  on  a  level  with 
Shakspeare : 

"And  till  Eternity  with  power  sublime 
Shall  mark  the  mortal  hour  of  hoary  Time, 
Shakspeare  and  Garrick  like  twin-stars  shall  shine, 
And  earth  irradiate  with  a  beam  divine." 


«.]  LAMB'S  PLACE  AS  A  CRITIO.  178 

Why  is  it,  asks  Lamb,  that  "  from  the  days  of  the  actor 
here  celebrated  to  our  own,  it  should  have  been  the  fash- 
ion to  compliment  every  performer  in  his  turn,  that  has 
had  the  luck  to  please  the  town  in  any  of  the  great  char- 
acters of  Shakspeare,  with  the  notion  of  possessing  a  mind 
congenial  with  the  poefs :  how  people  should  come  thus 
unaccountably  to  confound  the  power  of  originating  poet- 
ical images  and  conceptions  with  the  faculty  of  being  able 
to  read  or  recite  the  same  when  put  into  words?"  And 
he  goes  on,  in  the  same  strain  of  contempt,  to  speak  of 
the  "  low  tricks  upon  the  eye  and  ear,"  which  the  player 
can  so  easily  compass,  as  contrasted  with  the  "  absolute 
mastery  over  the  heart  and  soul  of  man,  which  a  great 
dramatic  poet  possesses."  No  one  knew  better  than  Lamb, 
that  the  resources  of  the  actor's  art  are  not  fairly  or  ade- 
quately stated  in  such  language  as  this.  He  had  himself 
the  keenest  relish  for  good  acting,  and  no  one  has  de- 
scribed and  criticised  it  more  finely.  Witness  his  descrip- 
tion of  his  favourite  Munden,  in  the  part  of  the  Greenwich 
Pensioner,  Old  Dosey,  and  of  Bensley's  conception  of  the 
character  of  Malvolio.  Or,  again,  take  the  exquisite  pas- 
sage in  which  he  recalls  Mrs.  Jordan's  performance  of  Vi- 
ola: "There  is  no  giving  an  account  how  she  delivered 
the  disguised  story  of  her  love  for  Orsino.  It  was  no  set 
speech,  that  she  had  foreseen,  so  as  to  weave  it  into  a  har- 
monious period,  line  necessarily  following  line  to  make  up 
the  music — yet  I  have  heard  it  so  spoken,  or  rather  read, 
not  without  its  grace  and  beauty ;  but  when  she  had  de- 
clared her  sister's  history  to  be  a  *  blank,'  and  that  she 
'never  told  her  love,'  there  was  a  pause,  as  if  the  story 
had  ended  —  and  then  the  image  of  the  *  worm  in  the 
bud'  came  up  as  a  new  suggestion — and  the  heightened 
image  of  '  Patience '  still  followed  after  that,  as  by  some 


174  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

growing  (and  not  mechanical)  process,  thought  springing 
up  after  thought,  I  would  almost  say,  as  they  were  wa- 
tered by  her  tears."  We  are  quite  sure  that  the  writer 
of  these  eloquent  words  did  not  seriously  regard  the  art 
of  acting  as  a  mere  succession  of  tricks  "  upon  the  eye 
and  ear."  He  was  for  the  moment  prejudiced  against  the 
great  actor — whom,  by  the  way,  he  had  never  seen.  Gar- 
rick  having  left  the  stage  in  1776  —  by  the  injudicious 
language  of  his  flatterers.  But  if  we  make  due  allowance 
for  his  outburst  of  spleen,  we  shall  find  much  that  is 
admirably  true  mixed  up  with  it.  Critics  have  often,  for 
instance,  insisted  upon  what  is  gained  by  seeing  a  drama 
acted,  as  distinguished  from  reading  it,  and  Lamb  here  de- 
votes himself  to  showing  how  far  it  is  from  being  all  gain. 
"  It  is  difficult  for  a  frequent  playgoer  to  disembarrass  the 
idea  of  Hamlet  from  the  person  and  voice  of  Mr.  Kemble. 
We  speak  of  Lady  Macbeth,  while  we  are  in  reality  think- 
ing of  Mrs.  Siddons."  We  get  distinctness,  says  Lamb, 
from  seeing  a  character  thus  embodied,  but "  dearly  do  we 
pay  "  for  this  sense  of  distinctness. 

This  line  of  criticism  leads  up  to  the  crowning  paradox 
of  this  essay,  that  the  plays  of  Shakspeare  "  are  less  calcu- 
lated for  performance  on  a  stage  than  those  of  almost  any 
other  dramatist  whatever."  Here  again  it  may  be  said 
that  no  one  knew  better  than  Lamb  that  in  a  most  im- 
portant sense  these  words  are  the  very  reverse  of  truth. 
There  is  no  quality  in  which  Shakspeare's  greatness  as  a 
dramatist  is  more  conspicuous  than  his  knowledge  of  what 
is  effective  in  stage  representation.  But  Lamb  chose  to 
mean  something  very  different  from  this.  He  was  think- 
ing of  certain  other  qualities  in  the  poet  which  are  incom- 
municable by  the  medium  of  acting,  and  on  these  he  pro- 
ceeds to  dwell,  discussing  for  that  purpose  the  traditional 


JX.]  LAMB'S  PLACE  AS  A  CRITIC.  175 

stage  rendering  of  Hamlet  and  other  characters.  He  points 
out  how  the  stage  Hamlet  almost  always  overdoes  his  scorn 
for  Polonius,  and  his  brutality  to  Ophelia,  and  asks  the  rea- 
son of  this.  It  does  not  seem  to  occur  to  him  that  this  is 
simply  bad  acting,  and  that  it  is  not  at  all  a  necessary  in- 
cident of  the  art  that  Hamlet's  feelings  should  be  thus 
represented.  He  seems  to  be  confounding  the  limita- 
tions of  the  particular  actor  with  those  of  his  art.  In- 
deed, it  is  clear  that  many  of  the  positions  maintained  in 
this  paper  are  simply  convenient  opportunities  for  en- 
larging upon  some  character  or  conception  of  the  great 
dramatist. 

Lamb  had  a  juster  complaint  against  Garrick  than  that 
supplied  by  the  words  of  a  foolish  epitaph.  He  boldly 
expresses  a  doubt  whether  the  actor  was  capable  of  any 
real  admiration  for  Shakspeare.  Would  any  true  lover  of 
of  his  plays,  he  asks,  have  "  admitted  into  his  matchless 
scenes  such  ribald  trash"  as  Tate  and  Cibber  and  the  rest 
had  foisted  into  the  acting  versions  of  the  dramas  ?  Much 
of  the  scorn  and  indignation  expressed  by  Lamb  in  this 
paper  becomes  intelligible  when  we  recall  in  what  garbled 
shapes  the  dramatist  was  presented.  Garrick  himself  had 
taken  a  prominent  share  in  these  alterations  of  the  text. 
It  was  he  who  completely  changed  the  last  act  of  Hamlet, 
and  turned  the  Winter's  Tale  into  a  piece  of  Arcadian  in- 
sipidity. But  the  greatest  outrage  of  all,  in  Lamb's  view, 
would  be  Tate's  version  of  Lear — in  a  modified  edition  of 
which  Garrick  himself  had  performed.  In  this  version — 
which  the  editor  of  Bell's  acting  edition  (1774)  calls  a 
"judicious  blending"  of  Shakspeare  and  Tate — the  char- 
acter of  the  Fool  is  altogether  omitted ;  Cordelia  survives, 
and  marries  Edgar ;  and  Lear,  Kent,  and'  Gloster  announce 
their  intention  of  retiring  into  private  life,  to  watch  the 


17«  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

happiness  of  the  young  couple,  Lear  himself  bringing 
down  the  curtain  with  these  amazing  lines: 

"  Thou,  Kent,  and  I,  retired  from  noise  and  strife, 
Will  calmly  pass  our  short  reserves  of  time 
In  cool  reflections  on  our  fortunes  past, 
Cheered  with  relation  of  the  prosperous  reign 
Of  this  celestial  pair ;  thus  our  remains 
Shall  in  an  even  course  of  thoughts  be  past, 
Enjoy  the  present  hour,  nor  fear  the  last." 

This  was  the  stuff  which  in  Lamb's  day  the  actors  and 
their  audience  were  content  to  accept  as  the  work  of  the 
Master-hand.  It  may  well  account  for  a  tone  of  bitter- 
ness, and  even  of  exaggeration,  that  pervades  the  essay.  It 
is  some  compensation  that  it  drew  from  Lamb  his  noble 
vindication  of  Shakspeare's  original.  The  passage  is  well 
known,  but  I  cannot  deny  myself  the  pleasure  of  quoting 
it  once  again : 

"  The  Lear  of  Shakspeare  cannot  be  acted.  The  contemptible  ma- 
chinery by  which  they  mimic  the  storm  which  he  goes  out  in,  is  not 
more  inadequate  to  represent  the  horrors  of  the  real  elements,  than 
any  actor  can  be  to  represent  Lear ;  they  might  more  easily  propose 
to  personate  the  Satan  of  Milton  upon  a  stage,  or  one  of  Michael  An- 
gelo's  terrible  figures.  The  greatness  of  Lear  is  not  in  corporal  di- 
mension, but  in  intellectual ;  the  explosions  of  his  passion  are  terri- 
ble as  a  volcano ;  they  are  storms  turning  up  and  disclosing  to  the 
bottom  that  sea,  bis  mind,  with  all  its  vast  riches.  It  is  his  mind 
which  is  laid  bare.  This  case  of  flesh  and  blood  seems  too  insignifi- 
cant to  be  thought  on :  even  as  he  himself  neglects  it.  On  the  stage 
we  see  nothing  but  corporal  infirmities  and  weakness,  the  impotence 
of  rage :  while  we  read  it,  we  see  not  Lear,  but  we  are  Lear,  we  are 
in  his  mind,  we  are  sustained  by  a  grandeur  which  baflBes  the  malice 
of  daughters  and  storms ;  in  the  aberrations  of  his  reason  we  discov- 
er a  mighty  irregular  power  of  reasoning,  immethodized  from  the  or- 
dinw^  ;}urposeB  of  lif^  but  exerting  its  powers,  as  the  wind  blows 


tt]  LAMB'S  PLACE  AS  A  CRITIC.  Ill 

where  it  Usteth,  at  will  upon  the  corruptions  and  abuses  of  mankind. 
What  have  looks  or  tones  to  do  with  that  sublime  identification  of 
his  age  with  that  of  the  heavens  themselves,  when,  in  his  reproaches  to 
them  for  conniving  at  the  injustice  of  his  children,  he  reminds  them 
that  '  they  themselves  are  old  ?'  What  gestures  shall  we  appropri- 
ate to  this  ?  What  has  the  voice  or  the  eye  to  do  with  such  things  ? 
But  the  play  is  beyond  all  art,  as  the  tamperings  with  it  show :  it  is 
too  hard  and  stony ;  it  must  have  love-scenes,  and  a  happy  ending. 
It  is  not  enough  that  Cordelia  is  a  daughter ;  she  must  shine  as  a 
lover  too.  Tate  has  put  his  hook  in  the  nostrils  of  this  Leviathan, 
for  Garrick  and  his  followers,  the  showmen  of  the  scene,  to  draw  the 
mighty  beast  about  more  easily.  A  happy  ending ! — as  if  the  living 
martyrdom  that  Lear  had  gone  through,  the  flaying  of  his  feelings 
alive,  did  not  make  a  fair  dismissal  from  the  stage  of  life  the  only 
decorous  thing  for  him.  If  he  is  to  live  and  be  happy  after,  if  he 
could  sustain  this  world's  burden  after,  why  all  this  pudder  and  prep- 
aration — why  torment  us  with  all  this  unnecessary  sympathy  ?  as  if 
the  childish  pleasure  of  getting  his  gilt  robes  and  sceptre  again  could 
tempt  him  to  act  over  again  his  misused  station — as  if,  at  his  years, 
and  with  his  experience,  anything  was  left  but  to  die." 

No  passage  in  Lamb's  writings  is  better  fitted  than  this 
to  illustrate  his  peculiar  power  as  a  commentator.  It  as 
little  suggests  Hazlitt  or  Coleridge,  as  it  does  Schlegel  or 
Gervinus.  It  is  more  remote  still — it  need  hardly  be 
added — from  the  fantastic  tricks  of  a  later  day,  which  are 
doing  all  they  can  to  make  Shakspearian  criticism  hide- 
ous. Lamb's  emphatic  vindication  of  the  course  of  events 
in  Shakspeare's  tragedy  of  course  implies  a  criticism  and 
a  commendation  of  the  dramatist.  But  no  one  feels  that 
he  is  either  patronizing  or  judging  Shakspeare.  He 
takes  Lear,  as  it  were,  out  of  the  hands  of  literature,  and 
regards  him  as  a  human  being  placed  in  the  world  where 
all  men  have  to  suffer  and  be  tempted.  We  forget  that 
he  is  a  character  in  a  play,  or  even  in  history.  Lamb's 
criticism  is  a  commentary  on  life,  and  no  truer  homage 


m  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap. 

could  be  paid  to  the  dramatist  than  that  he  should  be  al- 
lowed for  the  time  to  pass  out  of  our  thoughts. 

Thoroughly  characteristic  of  Lamb  is  the  admirable 
paper  on  The  Sanity  of  Tnie  Genius,  suggested  by  Dry- 
den's  famous  line  as  to  "  great  wit"  being  nearly  allied  to 
madness.  It  aims  to  disprove  this,  and  to  show  that,  on 
the  contrary,  the  greatest  wits  "  will  ever  be  found  to  be 
the  sanest  writers."  He  illustrates  this  by  the  use  that 
Shakspeare  and  others  make  of  the  supernatural  persons 
and  situations  in  their  writings.  "  Caliban,  the  Witches, 
are  as  true  to  the  laws  of  their  own  nature  (ours  with  a 
difference)  as  Othello,  Hamlet,  and  Macbeth.  Herein  the 
great  and  the  little  wits  are  differenced :  that  if  the  latter 
wander  ever  so  little  from  nature  or  actual  existence,  they 
lose  themselves  and  their  readers."  And  with  a  marvel- 
lous semblance  of  paradox,  which  yet  is  felt  to  be  pro- 
foundly true,  he  proceeds  to  declare  that  in  Spenser's 
episode  of  the  "Cave  of  Mammon,"  where  the  Money- 
God,  and  his  daughter  Ambition,  and  Pilate  washing  his 
hands — the  most  discordant  persons  and  situations — are 
introduced,  the  controlling  power  of  the  poet's  sanity 
makes  the  whole  more  actually  consistent  than  the  char- 
acters and  situations  of  every-day  life  in  the  latest  novel 
from  the  Minerva  Press.  It  is  a  proof,  he  says,  "  of  that 
hidden  sanity  which  still  guides  the  poet  in  his  wildest 
seeming  aberrations."  No  detached  sentences  can,  how- 
ever, convey  an  idea  of  this  splendid  argument.  Nothing 
that  Lamb  has  written  proves  more  decisively  how  large  a 
part  the  higher  imagination  plays  in  true  criticism ;  noth- 
ing better  illustrates  the  truth  of  Butler's  claim,  that 

"  The  poet  must  be  tried  by  his  peers, 
And  not  by  pedants  and  philosophers." 


IX.]  LAMB'S  PLACE  AS  A  CRITIC.  179 

That  Lamb  was  a  poet  is  at  the  root  of  his  greatness 
as  a  critic ;  and  his  own  judgments  of  poetry  show  the 
same  sanity  to  which  he  points  in  his  poetical  brethren. 
He  is  never  so  impulsive  or  discursive  that  he  fails  to 
show  how  unerring  is  his  judgment  on  all  points  connect- 
ed with  the  poet's  art.  There  had  been  those  before 
Lamb,  for  example,  who  had  quoted  and  called  attention  to 
the  poetry  of  George  Wither ;  but  no  one  had  thought  of 
noticing  that  his  metre  was  also  that  of  Ambrose  Philips, 
and  that  Pope  and  his  friends  had  only  proved  their  own 
defective  ear  by  seeking  to  make  it  ridiculous.  "  To  the 
measure  in  which  these  lines  are  written,  the  wits  of 
Queen  Anne's  days  contemptuously  gave  the  name  of 
Namby-Pamby,  in  ridicule  of  Ambrose  Philips,  who  has 
used  it  in  some  instances,  as  in  the  lines  on  Cuzzoni,  to 
my  feeling  at  least  very  deliciously ;  but  Wither,  whose 
darling  measure  it  seems  to  have  been,  may  show  that  in 
skilful  hands  it  is  capable  of  expressing  the  subtlest  move- 
ment of  passion.  So  true  it  is,  what  Drayton  seems  to 
have  felt,  that  it  is  the  poet  who  modifies  the  metre,  not 
the  metre  the  poet." 

It  was  in  the  margin  of  a  copy  of  Wither's  poems 
that  this  exquisite  comment  was  originally  made;  and  in 
such  a  casual  way  did  much  of  Lamb's  finest  criticism 
come  into  being.  All  through  his  life,  in  letter  and  essay, 
he  was  making  remarks  of  this  kind,  throwing  them  out 
by  the  way,  never  thinking  that  they  would  be  hereafter 
treasured  up  as  the  most  luminous  and  penetrative  judg* 
ments  of  the  century.  And  it  may  well  be  asked  why, 
with  such  a  range  of  sympathy,  from  Marlowe  to  Ambrose 
Philips,  from  Sir  T.  Browne  to  Sir  William  Temple,  he 
was  so  limited,  so  one-sided  in  his  estimate  of  the  litera- 
ture of  his  own  age?    It  is  true  that  he  was  among  the 


180  CHABLES  LAMB.  [chat. 

first  in  England  to  appreciate  Burns  and  Wordsworth. 
But  to  Scott,  Byron,  and  Shelley  he  entertained  a  feeling 
almost  of  aversion.  He  was  glad  (as  we  gather  from  the 
essay  on  The  Sanity  of  True  Genius)  ttat  "a  happier 
genius  "  had  arisen  to  expel  the  "  innutritions  phantoms  " 
of  the  Minerva  Press;  but  the  success  of  the  Waverley 
Novels  seems  to  have  caused  him  amusement  rather  than 
any  other  feeling.  About  Byron  he  wrote  to  Joseph 
Cottle :  "  I  have  a  thorough  aversion  to  his  character,  and 
a  very  moderate  admiration  of  his  genius:  he  is  great  in 
so  little  a  way.  To  be  a  poet  is  to  be  the  man,  not  a 
petty  portion  of  occasional  low  passion  worked  up  in  a 
permanent  form  of  humanity."  Shelley's  poetry,  he  told 
Barton,  he  did  not  understand,  and  that  it  was  "  thin  sown 
with  profit  or  delight."  When  he  read  Goethe's  Faust 
(of  course  in  an  English  version),  he  at  once  pronounced 
it  inferior  to  Marlowe's  in  the  chief  motive  of  the  plot,  and 
was  evidently  content  to  let  criticism  end  there.  Some- 
thing of  this  may  be  ascribed  to  a  jealousy  in  Lamb — a 
strange  and  needless  jealousy  for  his  own  loved  writers  of 
the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  and  a  fear  lest  the 
new  comers  should  usurp  some  of  the  praise  and  renown 
that  he  claimed  for  them ;  something,  also,  to  a  perverse- 
ness  in  him  which  made  him  like  to  be  in  opposition  to 
the  current  opinion,  whatever  it  might  be.  He  was  often 
unwilling,  rather  than  unable,  to  discuss  the  claims  of  a 
new  candidate  for  public  favour.  He  lived  mainly  in  com- 
munion with  an  older  literature.  It  was  to  him  inexhaust- 
ible in  amount  and  in  excellence,  and  he  was  impatient  of 
what  sought  to  divert  his  attention  from  it.  It  was  liter- 
ally true  of  him  that  "  when  a  new  book  came  out — he 
read  an  old  one." 

But  even  of  the  old  ones,  the  classics  of  our  literature. 


xt]  LAMB'S  PLACE  AS  A  CRITIC.  181 

it  was  not  easy  to  say  what  his  opinion  in  any  case  would 
be.  For  instance,  he  was  a  great  admirer  of  Smollett,  and 
was  with  great  difficulty  brought  to  admit  the  superiority 
of  Fielding.  And  in  the  work  of  a  greater  humourist  than 
Smollett,  in  the  Picaresque  school — Oil  Bias — he  would 
not  acknowledge  any  merit  at  all.  The  truth  is  that  for 
Lamb  to  enjoy  a  work  of  humour,  it  must  embody  a  strong 
human  interest,  or  at  least  have  a  pulse  of  humanity  throb- 
bing through  it.  Humour,  without  pity  or  tenderness, 
only  repelled  him.  It  was  another  phase  of  the  same 
quality  in  him  that — as  we  have  seen  in  his  estimate  of 
Byron — where  he  was  not  drawn  to  the  man,  he  was  almost 
disabled  from  admiring,  or  even  understanding,  the  man's 
work.  Had  he  ever  come  face  to  face  with  the  author 
for  a  single  evening,  the  result  might  have  been  quite  dif- 
ferent. 

There  is  no  diflSculty,  therefore,  in  detecting  the  limita- 
.tions  of  Lamb  as  a  critic.  In  a  most  remarkable  degree 
he  had  the  defects  of  his  qualities.  Where  his  heart  was, 
there  his  judgment  was  sound.  Where  he  actively  dis- 
liked, or  was  passively  indifferent,  his  critical  powers  re- 
mained dormant.  He  was  too  fond  of  paradox,  too  much 
at  the  mercy  of  his  emotions  or  the  mood  of  the  hour,  to 
be  a  safe  guide  always.  But  where  no  disturbing  forces 
interfered,  he  exercised  a  faculty  almost  unique  in  the 
history  of  criticism.  When  Southey  heard  of  his  Speci- 
mens of  the  English  Dramatic  Poets,  he  wrote  to  Cole- 
ridge :  "  If  co-operative  labour  were  as  practicable  as  it 
is  desirable,  what  a  history  of  English  literature  might 
he  and  you  and  I  set  forth !"  Such  an  enterprise  would 
be,  as  Southey  saw,  all  but  impossible;  but  if  the  spirit- 
ual insight  of  Coleridge,  and  the  unwearied  industry  and 
sober  common-sense  of  Southey,  could  be  combined  with 
9 


188  CHARLES  LAMB.  [chap.  ix. 

the  special  genius  of  Charles  Lamb,  something  like  the 
ideal  commentary  on  English  literature  might  be  the  re- 
sult. 

As  it  is,  Lamb's  contribution  to  that  end  is  of  the  rarest 
value.  If  it  is  too  much  to  say  that  he  singly  revived  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  it  is  because  we  see 
clearly  that  that  revival  was  coming,  and  would  have  come 
even  without  his  help.  But  he  did  more  than  recall  at- 
tention to  certain  forgotten  writers.  He  flashed  a  light 
from  himself  upon  them,  not  only  heightening  every  charm 
and  deepening  every  truth,  but  making  even  their  eccen- 
tricities beautiful  and  lovable.  And  in  doing  this  he  has 
linked  his  name  for  ever  with  theirs.  When  we  think 
of  "  the  sweetest  names,  and  which  carry  a  perfume  in 
the  mention — Kit  Marlowe,  Drayton,  Drummond  of  Haw- 
thornden,  and  Cowley" — then  the  thought  of  Charles 
Lamb  will  never  be  far  off.  His  name,  too,  has  a  per- 
fume in  the  mention.  "  There  are  some  reputations," 
wrote  Southey  to  Caroline  Bowles,  "  which  will  not  keep, 
but  Lamb's  is  not  of  that  kind.  His  memory  will  retain 
its  fragrance  as  long  as  the  best  spice  that  ever  was  ex- 
pended upon  one  of  the  Pharaohs." 


THS  XND. 


